


Uncle Peter Saves the Universe

by Escalus



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Fix-It, Future Fic, Gen, Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault, Parallel Universes, Peter Hale-centric, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-24
Updated: 2020-02-16
Packaged: 2021-02-18 06:57:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 24,225
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21540256
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Escalus/pseuds/Escalus
Summary: There is something very wrong with the world.  Everything keeps changing, from good to bad to good, from light to dark to light, from life to death and back again.  Peter Hale seems to be the only person to remember how the world was, so it's up to him to save reality to what it should be.   He might, perhaps, make some changes along the way.
Comments: 58
Kudos: 100





	1. Happy Place with No Monsters

**Author's Note:**

> Sometimes, I have been very critical about how Teen Wolf writers present Peter Hale. It's time for me to put my money where my mouth is. I will add tags as the story progresses.

For the edification of all living beings everywhere, Peter wanted to make it very clear that he could never be described as fussy. His tastes were _refined._

If someone wanted to see a fussy werewolf, an observer would need to seek out Ethan Steiner-Whittemore. Now that was a former killer alpha whose nostrils would flare dangerously if you bumped into one of his pretentious pre-Roman English art sculptures sitting on his terribly overpriced art deco coffee table. Peter hadn’t been there himself, but he had seen way too many pictures of the McCall pack allies’ London apartment, taken by his way too easily impressed daughter. Someone should raise Andy Warhol from the dead and tell him his aesthetic was being mangled.

Peter had very carefully cultivated his taste, and a key part of that taste was the awareness that he owned the objects in his home — they didn’t own him. If he wanted to smash them, he would be able to do with little regret. And yet, he still had chosen every single as a reflection of his own personality yet taking into account the harmony it must have with the general layout of the apartment. He was proud of the time and effort he had put into his surroundings, even if he could have afforded someone else doing the work for him.

So when he woke up to the buzzing of an alarm clock which was shaped, quite unfortunately, like a clown, he knew immediately that something was wrong.

“If this is someone’s idea of a joke,” he growled out from the depths of his bedspread, “I hope they can keep laughing while I remove their pancreas.”

Peter sat up in bed, rubbing at his eyes. He was still a little groggy even if he had been able to grind out an appropriate threat. Regrettably, he had come to experience some residual effects on the mornings after the full moon. This fact he had told no one, as he did not like revealing vulnerabilities. 

It had been different when he had been younger and a beta. Back then, the full moon would wear him out, but when he woke up the next day he felt completely refreshed and totally re-energized. The fire had changed that along with almost everything else. During his long convalescence, the full moon had come to signal a painful night, where his body, strengthened by the moonlight, strained to heal more and more of the fire damage. He had only enjoyed two full moons as an alpha — he didn’t remember much of the physical details, almost completely consumed by his need for vengeance. Once he had returned from the dead, the full moon frazzled him rather than energized him, even though its power had been key to his resurrection. The days following had made him feel too big for his body and uncoordinated, so he hadn’t enjoy the full moon as he had once. In fact, the disorientation had left him weak for days. It had remained so until he had managed to augment his powers by absorbing an enemy’s.

But that still didn’t explain why there was a garish, ugly clock in his bedroom. 

He didn’t pick up the scent of any intruder, and it would take either a very skill or a very powerful one to come into his apartment and stand next to his very bed without him being able to pick up the slightest trace. Either way, it still wouldn’t explain why he left the clock.

And it also wouldn’t explain the pictures.

“What the hell?”

On the dresser were framed photographs. The frames were sterling silver, heavy and well-made, the type he would have favored when buying, so that wasn’t what surprised him. He had pictures of his family, but he had carefully packed them away when he had returned to this apartment. They had been sealed in envelopes, packed in small boxes and those small boxes had been packed into a larger box and stored in the close of the guess bedroom. It had been a form of self-care, as he couldn’t bear to look at them.

But now there pictures sitting on his dresser, some pictures he recognized, and some pictures he didn’t. Pictures of Talia, Derek, Cora, Laura and all the others. There were pictures of holidays, weddings, and candids. There were impossible photos of things that hadn’t happened, that would never happen. 

Peter stood up, fully awake now, aware of the essential wrongness in the room, aside from ugly clocks and hurtful pictures. He had different furniture, even a different freaking carpet. He took a deep breath and mentally listed the possibilities.

One, he had had a mental breakdown. It wouldn’t be the first time that had happened.

Two, someone had tampered with his mind. Again, not the first time that had happened.

Three, this was nothing but a clumsy recreation of his bedroom. He had been kidnapped and was being gaslighted by someone with entirely too much time on their hands. This scenario was the least likely among the alternatives, but not impossible.

“Only one way to find out.”

He got out of bed and went to the window. Outside Beacon Hills glowed in the morning light, just as sprawling and tedious as it had when he had closed the curtains the night before. Peter frowned; this was unsettling. He ventured out into his apartment, and his unease did not diminish, for it was _almost_ right. Things would be mostly the way he remembered them, but then there would be things he couldn’t ever imagine having in his home. He found a collection of toys and board games in the hall closet, and he found a case of terrible domestic beer in the fridge. When he took a shower, he discovered a low-end generic baby shampoo on the shelf. 

And yet, he could see every one of these things belonging in his home, if the world was different than it was. 

He slid on a jacket, finding car keys in the pocket. With mounting horror, he realized he was driving a Volvo. A four-year-old Volvo. 

That settled it. It was time to visit the local charlatan.

**~*~**

Because the universe wasn’t done screwing with him yet, Peter noted as he approached the front doors of the Beacon Hills Animal Clinic that Scott McCall was working the front desk. Never one of his favorite people, he thought the alpha was out running down another one of Monroe’s splinter cells with Chris Argent. Using a window as a makeshift mirror, he checked his appearance. He would be damned if he would reveal any of the present situation to the punk; he would never show weakness in front of the ruling alpha of Beacon Hills. He would be calm, cool and collected while trying to find out where that bald motherfucker Deaton was hiding. The veterinarian was probably in the back room, practicing being smug in a mirror.

His entire plan fell apart the moment the bell hanging above the door announced his entrance. It didn’t fall apart because Scott was wearing a thin gold hoop in his nose or that his forearms, revealed by the rolled up sleeves of his oxford work shirt, were covered with tattoos. 

It didn’t fall apart because Scott reacted to his presence with a very polite and very friendly greeting, “Good morning, Mr. Hale.” Scott tended to be disgustingly friendly, even though Peter believed he had broken the whelp of trying to befriend him.

It fell apart because this Scott McCall was not an alpha. He wasn’t even a werewolf. 

Peter would have liked history to note that he did not faint. Werewolves do not faint. He just felt a little dizzy for a moment. He would have liked to have seen _anyone_ go through what he had gone through that morning and not become a little light-headed. 

At least some things hadn’t changed. When he staggered under the very understandable stress he was under, Scott rushed out from behind the counter and caught him before he fell. “Are you okay?” 

“I’m fine,” Peter lied. “Scott, what are you doing here?”

“It’s summer, Mr. Hale. The semester’s over.” Scott may not have been a werewolf, but he was still strong enough to help Peter to a seat. “Here, you should sit down.”

“No, who … wait, where’s Deaton?”

“Alan’s not coming in today. He was out of town for the solstice.” Scott said sympathetically and tried to put a hand on Peter’s brow. “I know I’m not fully trained yet, but if there’s something wrong, maybe I can help you?”

Peter brushed his hand off. “I don’t need a veterinarian.”

Scott looked momentarily hurt. “No, Mr. Hale. I mean the other thing. If you don’t want me to help you, I could go see if I can get him on the phone.” 

“What other thing?”

“That’s it. I’m calling the alpha.” Scott jumped up to go to the phone but Peter’s hand shot out and grabbed him by the wrist. 

“Who are you calling?” he grated. The world was still swimming in front of his eyes. 

“You’re hurting me,” Scott said quietly. He wasn’t strong enough to pull away from his grip, which on any other day would have made Peter smile, but it didn’t today. Too much was wrong. 

“Whose Emissary are you going to be?” Peter growled out.

“Uh.” Scott looked at him with open concern, the same soft-eyed look of compassion that in the True Alpha made Peter’s guts churn. His grip tightened and he showed his teeth, but instead of reacting to the pain, instead of reacting in fear, the iron will that had always tasked Peter so appeared on Scott’s face. “Let me go, Mr. Hale. You’re upset, and I don’t think you know what you’re doing.”

“Tell me.”

“I’m going to be Laura’s Emissary, once your sister Talia passes on.”

Peter dropped Scott’s arm like it was made of fire. Then he started laughing, long and loud. He kept laughing while Scott called his elder sister on the phone.

**~*~**

Scott had insisted on giving Peter a thorough check up, no matter how much he had demurred. In the end, Scott’s stubbornness won out. He shone a light in Peter’s eyes, checking his pupils’ response.

“Do you know what you’re doing?” Peter demanded. 

“I do, Mr. Hale.” The constant polite and sincere form of address was getting on Peter’s nerves. “Between school and Alan’s training, I can check for basic things like massive head trauma.”

“If it escaped your attention, Scott, I’m …”

“… a werewolf. I know Mr. Hale, but you know that even alphas can suffer serious enough physical trauma which takes time for things to right themselves.” Scott put the pen light down. He held his hand near Peters’ wrist, wordlessly asking for permission to take his pulse. Peter nodded offhandedly. “If the wound is bad enough, it could heal wrong, causing permanent damage, especially if it’s not treated immediately.”

“Scott.” Peter still couldn’t shake the feeling that this was all an elaborate joke. “Are you scolding me?”

“No, Mr. Hale. I’m simply pointing out that I can’t help you if you don’t cooperate.”

“I wouldn’t dream of being uncooperative.”

“I find that hard to believe, Peter.” Talia had always been able to surprise him by approaching undetected. It infuriated Peter a great deal. “You enjoy being uncooperative.” 

She was smiling at him, the way she had always had. Peter missed that more than he would ever tell anyone. He may have disagreed with her approach to allies, her approach to outsiders, her approach to emissaries, her approach to the Argents, and her approach to almost everything, but he loved her. He would rip the throat out of anyone who tried to claim otherwise.

“I swear, I’m not causing trouble on purpose.” Peter shrugged. “This time.”

Talia walked up and put her hand on his arm, and the instant calming touch of his alpha dispelling most of his anxiety. Most, but not all. 

“Tell me what’s wrong.”

“I would,” Peter tried to go for flippant, but it came out sincere. “But I’m not sure if you would believe me. I’m not sure that I believe me.”

Unexpectedly, Talia’s brows knitted in worry; she didn’t dismiss what he was saying, no matter how strange it sounded. Then again, Peter seldom admitted when he was at a loss, so when he did, it was something the entire family took seriously. 

“Why don’t you start from the beginning?”

“Well, the only place to start is with what’s the date?” 

Scott had respectfully retreated from the pair of them, but he was still listening. “June 21, 2016.” 

Peter did some calculations in his head. “That would make you twenty-one, right?”

“Yes, Mr. Hale.”

“That you keep addressing me in that manner is really freaking me out,” Peter admitted. “Can’t you be dully antagonistic a little bit?”

Talia glanced over at the apprentice emissary, who looked confused. “Peter, why does that matter?”

“Last night, I went to bed, it was June 20, 2016 and a full moon, but when I woke up this morning, everything was different.” Peter took a deep breath. “And I know the next question you are going to ask is what exactly I mean by everything, yet I’m sure that everything I tell you will sound ludicrous to you. Talia, I swear it is the truth.”

“Tell me.” The alpha crossed her arms over her chest.

“Well, you’ve been dead for eleven years. In 2005, Kate Argent trapped us in the house by surrounding it with mountain ash and tried to burn us all alive. Only I, Derek, Laura, and Cora escaped.”

Scott’s face openly displayed his horror, while Talia’s face registered shock as well but also a lack of real surprise. Maybe she suspected Kate Argent as being capable of such things or maybe she knew more than she would say. “Go on.”

Peter decided a bit of judicious editing was called for as he went on. There was no need to explain everything that happened after the fire, since by some miracle, it was no longer true. “Well, obviously I remember things very differently, and with you being alive — you understand it’s a lot to process.”

“Why?” Talia pressed. “Even if I were gone, Laura would be there for you.”

“Laura …” Peter hesitated. “Is not the alpha.”

That surprised Talia. “I don’t like the sound of that. Who is?” 

Peter had had a terrible morning, and while he thought about not sharing this information, it just didn’t seem like the time to play coy. He pointed at Scott McCall.

“Me?” The look on Scott’s face was priceless and almost worth the stress Peter was under. Almost. 

Talia looked from Peter to Scott and then back again. “Hmph.”

**~*~**

Talia drove Peter back to the Hale House. Keeping up her penchant for dependable, useful vehicles, she drove a 2014 Ford F-150, finished dark blue to hide the dirt. Peter could smell the worry on her; she was concerned for him. After the revelation that in his memory, McCall was the alpha, Talia had called an end to the interrogation and determined she would take Peter home. Scott would make sure that Deaton knew about the situation and would make a house call as soon as he could.

He wondered, for a moment, if this were nothing but a pleasant dream. 

“Don’t worry, Peter. We’ll find a way to fix this.”

Peter couldn’t help but poke at her. “Is that concern in your voice?”

The alpha glanced over. “You’re my beta. You’re my brother. Why wouldn’t I be concerned about you?”

“You said so yourself — I haven’t always been the most cooperative beta.”

“No, you haven’t. There have been times when you were a real problem, but I know now that you’ll be there when I need you.” 

Peter shrugged and looked out the window. “You do? I don’t recall you expressing such confidence in me before.”

“Peter.” Talia’s voice was gentle and reassuring while also a demand for respect. It was one of her talents, which he had never mastered. “You were the one who saved us from the fire.”

His head whipped about. Now he was sure it was a dream. 

“You were creeping—”

Peter snorted. 

“You don’t call a wolf a dog. You were creeping around the high school, keeping an eye on Derek after that business with Paige Krasikeva. You spotted Kate Argent, even though she was going under another name, and you figured out what she was doing to my son.” 

“I did?” Peter would never have told anyone ever that he had always regretted giving Derek his space after the situation with Paige.

“You did. You brought it to me, and I did the rest.”

“What happened to the lovely Miss Argent?”

“She’s doing a life sentence in Chowchilla for fourteen counts of conspiracy to commit murder, three counts of statutory rape, and one count of sexual assault. She won’t be getting out before 2026 without a pardon from the Governor.” 

“We didn’t handle it ourselves?”

Talia smiled. “You haven’t changed; you’ve always wanted to take the direct approach, but I’m still the alpha. I worked with the police and made sure enough was leaked to the press so they could speculate on every sordid detail. It might have been more satisfying in the short term to rip her throat out, but I’ve used the scandal to reduce the Argents’ influence in government agencies.”

“Gerard probably wasn’t happen about that.”

“Gerard is dead, blessedly so. I’m not sure if it was the cancer or if the Calaveras that got him, and I don’t much care. Victoria may hate us, but she’s not recklessly vindictive.” 

Peter smirked. “She can be under the right circumstances.” 

Talia glanced over at him, and he winked at her. 

“Spoilers.”

She frowned.

“It’s not important, Talia. Honestly.” He took a deep breath. “You know, if this turns out to be a dream, I’m going to be very, very pissed off. If that other world turns out to be a very involved nightmare … I’m going to be just as pissed off.”

“I don’t think I’m a dream, Peter.”

They pulled into the Hale House. It stood, as it always did for Peter, even when it was a horrific pile of burnt lumber, even if it was only in the back of his mind. It was home, no matter what. The younger members of the McCall Pack — _hmph_ — good-naturedly but ignorantly teased Derek and him about their fascination with the place while it still stood, but they didn’t really understand. They couldn’t. They had their own homes, but the Hale House was more than a home. It was history. 

“My family’s legacy.”

Talia turned to him as she walking towards the door. “What?”

“I was just thinking.”

“I’m going to tell the kids to keep away from you, for the time being. We don’t know what’s happened, so it’s best if they don’t tire you out. But I want you to understand something Peter — no matter what you remember happening, this is still your home. You’re family. You’re safe.”

She turned to go inside but Peter felt something stir in his gut. He had an opportunity to ask a question to which he really wanted an answer and never though he would get the chance. “Do you really believe that?”

Talia heard the pain in that question. “Peter, what do you remember?”

“Why did you take my memory of Malia?”

The alpha put her hands on her hips, studying him. She wiper her hands on her print skirt. “Let’s go for a walk.” She headed toward the woods, and after a moment’s hesitation, he followed her. He didn’t think he was in any danger, but he did stay a few steps behind her.

“It’s really unfortunate that you somehow remembered that.”

“Yet I _did._ ”

“You obviously don’t remember why I did it, though. I did it to protect you.”

Peter stopped in the woods. “How could erasing the memory of my daughter _protect_ me?”

Talia turned. “Corinne was becoming a problem. When Malia was a year old, Corinne made an attempt on her life. We barely stopped it, and she managed to get away. It had become obvious that while we could protect your daughter, it would ruin her life if she stayed with us. She would never be able to leave the house without one of us with her as long as her mother was free. School would be out of the question.”

“So we placed her with the Tates and erased any connection between us.” 

“Yes.”

“Still doesn’t explain why you tampered with my mind.”

“You weren’t happy, Peter. You wanted your daughter in your life, and you were never very good at not getting what you want. I could barely keep you from stalking the Tates. I knew it was only a matter of time before you went after the Desert Wolf. By yourself, if you had to.”

Peter growled. “If she were dead …”

“That’s exactly why I did it, Peter. Corinne had barely turned twenty-five and she was already a hired gun with a sinister reputation. Back then, she didn’t even operate alone. If you went after her …”

Talia looked down at the ground. 

“Go on.”

“If you went after her, I didn’t think you would come back. So I took the memory from you.” 

“You had no right.”

“I am the alpha,” Talia stood straight up and her eyes blazed red. “I did what I felt was best to protect my pack. That included you. That included Malia.”

He rolled his eyes. “I can smell your guilt from here.”

“In a way, it was my fault. I was the one who convinced Corinne to carry Malia to term. I thought that once she did, she would want the child. Or if she didn’t want the child, she’d let us raise Malia.”

“You forced her to carry the baby?”

Talia scoffed. “I didn’t lock her in a room. I persuaded her, for the good of her species. I’ll admit I didn’t expect such a violent reaction to motherhood.”

Peter nodded. “Of course I don’t remember this.” It made sense though. There were no bitten werecoyotes, only those who were born. Where once the phenomenon of a mother coyote passing down her power to her daughter had been an evolutionary means of preventing overpopulation, now it had helped push the species to the edge of extinction. There were so few left since werecoyotes had once been the exclusive domain of the Native American tribes, and Manifest Destiny had reduced their population significantly and reduced the werecoyote population even more. 

“I’m … I’m sorry that it hurts you. I understand how it might be for you, once you learned that Malia was yours. But, back then, it seemed the wisest course of action I could take.”

He lifted both eyebrows. “You’ve never apologized before, Talia, when you thought you were right.”

Talia turned and started walking toward the house. “You never stop learning, Peter. Not even when you’re an alpha.”

**~*~**

Slowly, very slowly, Peter began to trust this world. If it were a dream, it was a very long and very detailed one. There was no strange logic; everything made sense. Everything was where it should have been. Where it should _always_ have been. Even so, he forced himself to stay up the first two days until he couldn’t help but fall asleep, unwilling to risk any end to it.

Those first few days, Peter didn’t know how to act; he was innocent Uncle Peter once again. Even with Cora. Even with Laura. Derek had turned into an emo bastard, but even he didn’t view Peter with suspicion. And the little ones loved him — there were far more of them than what he remembered.

Once in a while, Peter had to spend some time alone in his apartment or in the woods when it all got too much. 

Over the weeks, Talia and he had several long talks, and he began to realize that at least, in this dream, she had never really ignored him. She didn’t always agree with him, but she always listened. 

Cora shocked him when she came talk to him because some girl broke her heart while she was at school. He was at a loss until he realized that he had become her confidant, when she was too afraid or too embarrassed to talk to her mom.

Laura was a deputy, and a good one, as far as he could tell. She had an acerbic wit, which she often directed toward him. It took four days before Peter realized that her antagonistic attitude was a front. It was an ongoing joke between them; he was a defense attorney and she was a cop. 

Derek had grown into an extremely moody graduate student, soon to be Dr. Hale. Even after hours of therapy with Marin Morrell, he was still quiet and prone to melancholy, but he was getting easier to be around, except for his tendency to recite Romantic verse and then explain it. 

He drove down to spy on Malia Tate at the University of San Francisco. She had never lived in the woods, not even for a day.

Peter tried to tease Alan Deaton mercilessly during the arduous hours where the Emissary tried to pierce the mystery of what Peter remembered as his life, but as usual, he had little luck. Scott, on the other hand, he could fluster with ease, so much that Laura had to step in several times. 

Each day that passed eroded the baseline anxiety which had been his constant companion since he had woke up. By the third week, he was sleeping normally. By the fourth week, he was content. He didn’t know how things had changed so drastically, and he no longer cared.

Then came the night of the full moon of July — the Buck Moon.


	2. Leaving Las Vegas

“Peter.” A weary voice reached out to him through the realms of sleep. He fought against consciousness, against the same post-moon disorientation he had felt before. Someone shook him. “You have to wake up.” 

“Leave me alone, Derek. I don’t have to be anywhere today,” Peter grumbled to whoever was imposing on him. His back ached, which it shouldn’t, and he was sleeping on something hard, which shouldn’t be. He had slept at the house last night, occupying his old bedroom after running with his family through the woods. He had started stayed at the house more and more, leaving his apartment unattended. In contrast to another world, Peter suddenly couldn’t get enough of his family. 

But this wasn’t his bedroom. It was hot, uncomfortable, and it smelled bad. It smelled of gasoline, trash, unwashed bodies and old blood.

“Peter, you’re dreaming.” It wasn’t Derek’s voice. Peter identified it as Scott McCall’s, but something was wrong with it. “We have to get moving.”

Peter forced himself to full consciousness. He wasn’t in the Hale House anymore. He was lying in a tunnel, liberally a culvert, large enough for a man like himself if he stooped, which Scott was doing right now. As far as he could see out from the corner of his eye was desert. Fear gripped him. “Where am I?”

“By my reckoning, we’re about eight miles northwest of the Trinity Test Site.” Scott had changed drastically from yesterday, gone was the nose ring and the polite respect. Now, the young man was heavily bearded and skin was grimy with dirt. Gone were the tattoos on his arms, even the symbol of his pack, as he was clad in a yellowed a-shirt and a pair of patched black jeans. He was thinner, almost emaciated, and his voice was hoarse with exhaustion.

“How did I get here?” Peter looked down and unzipped himself out of a tattered sleeping bag. His clothes were just as ragged, and he could feel weariness malingering in his bones. “What are we doing here?”

The other man heaved a heavy sigh. “I need you to focus, right now, Peter. We really don’t have time for this.”

“You’ll make time, Scott.” Peter snapped with a surprising authority, as he studied himself. He was wearing an old white oxford, blue jeans that were a size too big, and two pairs of socks. Next to him was a pair of cowboy boots repaired with duct tape. 

“For fuck’s sake, Peter,” Scott spat. “The water won’t last to Ruidoso if we don’t keep moving. I don’t want to die in the middle of fucking New Mexico.”

“Scott.” Peter’s voice trembled and he bit his cheek to steady it. Even in the face of another change, he couldn’t bring himself to be fully vulnerable. “As much as you can be slow on the uptake, I’m not playing around with you. I truly don’t know how I got here.”

Scott turned around, studying Peter until his changed from irritation to tired concern. He must have sensed that Peter wasn’t being difficult on purpose, and the faintest echo of Scott’s frustrating compassion appeared on his face. Scott dropped the heavy pack he picked up next to one that looked like its twin. 

“You don’t remember last night? It was the full moon.” 

“I remember the full moon, Scott. I remember enjoying it with my family in Beacon Hills. Why the hell are we in New Mexico looking like homeless bums?” A tremor was building between Peter’s shoulder blades, a madness pooling behind his eyes. He had eventually adjusted to seeing Talia, of having a family again, of being home. Now, it could all be gone again. He felt his breathing quicken and his vision swam between the dark of the tunnel and the light of the morning sky. 

“Peter?” Scott came closer to him, his tired eyes catching something in Peter’s demeanor. “Okay, I need you to listen to me. I need you to calm down.”

The culvert grew impossibly huge and still Peter felt like he was buried alive. He pushed himself back against the curved wall but lost his footing, sliding down once again. He struggled to move, to breathe, even to think. 

“Listen to me.” The younger man pleaded with him. “Come on, Peter, talk to me. Focus on my voice.” Scott was careful not to touch him. 

Peter couldn’t focus on Scott’s voice or anything else. His awareness drifted around like a balloon in a gale. He tried to call out for Talia, but he couldn’t form the words. He wanted to see Laura. He wanted his family, and he still couldn’t breathe. Darkness gathered at the edges of his vision. 

“Alpha!” Scott’s face loomed huge before him and his eyes turned a bright electric blue. 

He felt it, deep in the gut, the call of the beta and his answer, and Peter felt able to claw out of this hole. 

“Okay, Peter, and … and …” Scott struggled for something. “List your family. One at a time. Tell me who you were with last night.”

“T … t … “He couldn’t draw breath. He had just seen her last night. They had discussed a family vacation. 

“Come on, say it.”

“Talia.” 

“Talia, that’s right.” Scott encouraged him. “Now another. Keep going.”

“Laura.” She had insisted on working last night, because the full moon was when all the freaks came out. 

“Do it again.”

“Derek.” His nephew had droned on and on about Alessandro Manzoni and the importance of his poetry to Italian nationalism. Peter had made faces behind his back causing …

“Cora.” She had burst out into laughter. 

Peter kept saying the names. He had seen them, just yesterday, he had seen them. They were alive and real and grown up with lives and hopes and dreams of his own and now he was in New Mexico. But saying the names worked. Eventually, he could breathe again. He could move again. 

“Alpha,” Scott said at last, with just a hint of bitterness. “You better?”

Peter nodded. He rubbed at his face, scrubbing at his eyes. When he opened them, Scott held out his hand to help him up.

“When did you learn to do that?”

“Stiles.” Scott turned away. “He told me how to stop a panic attack.”

“Where is Stiles now?” 

“You know where he is. He’s with everyone else. You can’t flake out on me now, Peter. We have to keep it together.” Scott wouldn’t look at him; he fiddled with the packs. 

“Do we?”

“Yes.” Scott’s voice raised in anger, and then he mastered himself. “I don’t know why you’re acting like this, but we have to keep moving. If she finds us, she wins, do you understand?”

“Who wins?”

Scott turned to him surprise and alarm on his face. “Oh, fuck. Kate Argent. You remember who she is, right?”

“Of course.” 

“You can’t give up on me now. We have to keep fighting.”

Kate Argent had managed to survive death again? Peter, once he figured out what was going on, would have to see that it didn’t happen a third time. “Where are we going to meet the pack?”

“Peter.” The sound was ripped from Scott’s throat. “There is no more pack. It’s just you and me. We’re the only ones left.”

**~*~**

They didn’t talk for a long time. They walked.

Peter had never been able to stand looking vulnerable in front of others, even his own family, and especially not in front of Scott McCall. He tried to tell himself that the attack had been a side effect of whatever mystical asshole was doing this to him, that he had been forced to panic. But while he enjoyed being able to lie to the best of them, he could never bear to lie to himself.

It had felt like the fire again. 

He was able to put together from the available clues and a few pointed questions to Scott about their location, the basic summary of what was actually going on. He was an alpha; he had been an alpha since Laura’s death at his hand. When his panic had subsided, he had been able to remember that this was how it felt. He still had all his powers, though he was weaker than he had been at his peak. He suspected that one reason for this was because he hadn’t been eating well. With a careful eye, he could tell that Scott, while Bitten once again, wasn’t doing very well. They were two very unhealthy werewolves. 

Of course, the other reason for his weakness could have been that he only had one beta. 

They had cut across from Truth or Consequences in order to disappear from apparently, Argent hunters. Scott claimed that he had made contact with some people on a reservation. They could hide out there. 

Peter sighed. Of course, Scott would focus on survival first. Yet, maybe he had a point. But right now, Peter wanted more. 

“Scott.”

“Yeah.” His pace didn’t falter. 

“Who did you kill?”

“I’ve killed a lot of people.” 

Peter raised both eyebrows. “I’m sure you’re quite the little Rambo, aren’t you?”

Scott flashed him an irritated glare. “What do you want, Peter?”

“Kate Argent dead.”

Scott laughed grimly, bitterly, and kept walking. “At least you’re consistent.” 

The landscape spooled out in front of them. They were beginning to gain altitude, looking for a passage over the Oscura Mountains. They had made good time when they stopped for lunch on the shoulder of a low hill. If you could call it lunch, which seemed to consist of three-day old Big Macs and hoarded water. 

Peter grimaced at the traces of mold, but he was hungry. 

Scott watched him eat. “Why’d you ask me that?”

“What?”

“You asked me who I killed. You’ve been there for most of them.”

“I asked because there was a time not so long ago when you refused to kill.”

“I never refused to kill,” Scott answered quickly. “I refused to kill for _you._ ” 

“When did that change?”

“I still don’t kill for you. I killed to survive. I killed people trying to kill me.” 

“That’s a lie.”

Scott wadded up the wrapper from his terrible burger had come in and put it in his pack. Peter couldn’t tell if it was because Scott was refusing to litter or he didn’t want to leave a trail. “I think you remember. You just like kicking a beaten dog. You always have.” 

“I’ve never been fond of insubordination. But killing someone trying to kill you wouldn’t change the color of your eyes.”

Peter could sense Scott’s temper flare, but then it vanished under the hot midday sun. “I thought you had grown out of trying to rile me up?”

“We’re in the middle of the desert in July and I’m bored. Humor me.”

“I have. For years. Let’s get moving.” Scott stood up, took in a deep breath and coughed. “We have to keep moving.”

“If you killed to protect me, your alpha.” Peter stood up as well. “Then you killed for me.”

“Okay, you’re right. I killed for you. But I didn’t kill on your orders. I killed because I had to. Happy now?”

“No.”

Scott shoulders sagged. “Why the fuck are you bringing this up now, Peter? Why talk about it now? We were just fine, together, getting somewhere, not talking about the past. But now you want to bring it up. What’s your malfunction?”

“Killing Kate’s hunters wouldn’t turn your eyes blue.” Peter observed. “Who did?”

The beta turned and walked away. “It’s the past.”

“Scott.” It was reflex to him. He was the alpha, and he could force obedience. His eyes flashed their brilliant red. He relished it.

Scott turned around, his eyes glowing blue in answer. “What is wrong with you? Do you like proving you can control me? I’m here because it’s either that or face Kate’s hunters by myself. Why are you acting like this?” 

There was pain in Scott’s words, and Peter thought he might savor it. But he didn’t. He felt something else, a bond between alpha and beta, the obverse of what he had with Talia. He didn’t want to hurt Scott; he wanted to stop his pain. They were homeless fugitives running for their lives. Maybe Peter could try a little gentleness. “I’m sorry. I had a rough night. I don’t remember why your eyes are blue.”

“You … don’t?” Scott’s voice cracked.

Peter shook his head. Scott took a step forward to see if he was alright, but Peter raised his hand. “As you say, we have to keep moving. If there’s a problem, we can face it when we’ve reached safety, but I remember a time where you had a very stubborn personal rule about not killing innocents.”

“Any rule can break if enough pressure is applied.” 

Peter cocked his head. Something about that phrasing was familiar to him, but he couldn’t place it. He pushed the thought to the side. “Tell me.”

“There’s not much to tell.” Scott started moving down the side of the hill. “Do you remember the Winter Formal?”

“Yes.”

“Of course. You bit Lydia there. But, before you did, Jackson sold me out to Chris Argent.” Scott seemed dazed as he recalled the past; his voice toneless and dead. “I didn’t know that until Chris Argent appeared at the Formal and dragged Allison out. It was sheer luck that we had stayed to dance to one more song; she wanted to go out to the busses, and I don’t know what would have happened if Argent had caught us outside.” 

Peter remembered the story from what he had had to start calling his first life. 

“You’d bitten Lydia for some reason, but I didn’t know why yet.”

He smiled faintly, behind Scott’s back, remembering that particular gambit.

“I was going to try to find Derek, but I heard what happened to Lydia, so I went to the hospital first to try to find Stiles. When we figured out she wasn’t dying, we came out of the hospital and Kate was there waiting for us in the parking lot. I …” 

Scott had been speaking without emotion but now he choked up. He stumbled and then put one of his hands out to steady himself. 

“She threatened me, telling me how she was going to tell Allison. Telling me how, thanks to Jackson, they all knew. She could help me if I helped her find you. I defied her. I didn’t think …” Scott took in a breath that sounded like the beginning of asthma attack, but he didn’t have that now. 

“Kate does not like to be defied.” 

“I think her plan was to shoot me and then drag me off to whatever torture dungeon she had Derek chained up in.” Scott couldn’t keep walking. He looked up into the sky for strength. “Stiles pushed me out of the way. I don’t know why. I …”

Peter nodded. _Of course he did._

Scott stared up into the blue New Mexican sky. Peter observed, that his beta shouldn’t be crying in the desert. It was a waste of water. “He just died, right there, in my arms. He didn’t say anything. Not a word. I don’t know why … why didn’t he _say_ something … he shouldn’t have died like that. He should have got to say something.” 

Scott stopped talking long enough to let the emotions out. Peter imagined Scott didn’t think about this often.

“So, the police did their thing. Stiles’ father did his thing. The investigation took a few weeks, as you know, and then I went back to school. And on that day, my first day back, in the school parking lot, Jackson cornered me and demanded the Bite again.”

Peter had tried to push aside the memory of his own loss this morning by pushing Scott’s buttons, yet now the situation stood out to him clearly. They were now kindred by more than blood or by Bite. 

When Scott look back at him, his eyes shining a feverish blue, his claws extended, his fangs sharp in a wasted face. “So I bit him. A lot.” 

All he had wanted back then was a killer to help him take down the Argents, but now Peter saw that would have been just as frustrating as what had happened in his first life. The wreck in front of him was nothing much of anything at all. “Then you came and found me. What happened then?”

“We lost, Peter. We lost.”

**~*~**

This was intolerable.

The television had probably been made the same year that man landed on the moon. Its picture was fuzzy and the hum it emitted gave Peter a headache. They could only get one channel. This part of the reservation hadn’t been blessed with cable television yet. It possibly never would.

When they had first reached the reservation, Peter hadn’t thought it would be so bad, but they were quickly shuffled away to a remote site, away from the casinos and resorts that brought in the tribe’s wealth. They had been stored in an old mobile home; the rust bleeding from its rivets drawing brownish red lines down its side. 

Peter had been grateful at first. They had had beds to sleep in and indoor plumbing, including the exquisite luxury of showers. After the long walk across the New Mexican countryside, it had been welcome.

His gratitude had worn thin. 

Scott had taken to doing odd jobs around the reservation. The money he earned was enough to keep them in subpar food and enough kerosene for the generators. Of course, the man seemed content merely to survive.

 _No, not content,_ Peter concluded. _Broken._

Forgetting about the television, Peter looked down at his pad of paper. He had two columns. The first column, the one he had slowly wheedled information out of Scott, was a list of allies and resources. It was harder than it looked to pull information from a ruined man. The column was shallow, but that didn’t concern Peter. Hallucination or not, dream or not, Peter wasn’t going to sit in a world where Kate Argent sat triumphant over what should be his. 

Derek had never been rescued after the gunfight at their old home. Scott had not had the chance to find Derek, and Stiles had been dead before Peter could find Stiles in order to find Derek. Five years later, Derek had to be dead, but Peter couldn’t bring himself to cross his nephew off the list. There was hope, if you could call it that. Kate was just sadistic enough to keep Derek alive.

Cora was dead. She had come up from South America and found him. The alpha pack had never snagged her because Scott was no longer a candidate to become a True Alpha. Instead, she had found him and his reluctant beta. She had seemed composed of pure anger, and Peter had used that to turn her into what he thought would be his most effective weapon. But in their first attempt to take Kate, she had been shot in the face with a wolf’s bane round. 

Peter stopped before his claws tore the paper. His anchor was still the same — revenge — and it was cold and bright and heavy in his gut. 

“Someday.” He said it out loud. He repeated the word until the claws retreated into his hand. 

Both Stilinskis were dead. The sheriff had followed Stiles into the ground less than a year later. The police report portrayed it as a drunken accident; a man in mourning driving his car too fast down a rural road while impaired by too much Scotch. But Scott had kept an eye on Noah and swore up and down that the Sheriff hadn’t started drinking again. He had, however, been working during every spare moment on the mystery surrounding his son’s death. He had probably gotten too close.

Malia was still in the woods. Derek’s three betas had never been bitten. Deaton, no matter how much he had disapproved of Peter’s goals, had supplied them with advice and medical assistance until his clinic had “mysteriously” burned down with him in it. Allison Argent had gone against her family, warning them several times of Kate’s attempts to find and kill them, but she had finally been caught and shipped off to a boarding school in France, most likely unable to return until the matter was settled. 

Scott’s attempt to keep Melissa McCall out of it had failed utterly when Kate had used her to try to force Scott to hand Peter over. Scott had, by that time, learned he couldn’t trust an Argent. He had worked with Peter on a plan to free his mother, most likely not out of loyalty to his alpha but out of his rapidly withering morality. Melissa had been rescued but badly injured, and now the nurse lived in Los Angeles under the watchful eye of the FBI and Scott’s father.

Scott’s father had become a troublesome problem. Peter and Scott were wanted fugitives thanks to the Argent’s hand-picked replacement for the Sheriff, and Rafael McCall had used all his clout with the Bureau to pursue them.

Under Lydia Martin, there was only a question mark. 

Peter crossed off name after name. He had no access to wealth, no allies, and the combined might of federal law enforcement, local police, and the Argent hunting family coming for him. 

“I’ve got some work to do.”

The second column was brainstorming ideas about the shifts in reality. Peter wasn’t a person to loiter long in denial. These weren’t dreams. His memories weren’t being changed. They were complete worlds with completely histories, with people living their lives as if they were completely real. 

He made a little list of reasons this could be happening. They were all speculation. The only thing he was absolutely sure of is that it wasn’t time travel. He wasn’t living the same period of time over and over again. The moment his time in one universe ended, he began again in a new one. 

And those happened while he was asleep during the full moon. This next full moon, he would not sleep. He would stay up and see what he could find out. But he wouldn’t be doing it in rusty little trailer in Mexico. There was no chance of that happening.

**~*~**

“Don’t be such a stick in the mud, Scott.” Peter stood on Lookout Point, gazing at the unaware city of Beacon Hills below. “Eventually, we’ll have to win.”

“I don’t share your optimism.” Scott stood behind him. “What’s going to be different this time? We were safe.”

“We were surviving in that wretched little hut on wheels at the mercy of other people. In case you haven’t noticed, we’re not mutts. We are the remnants of a pack that stretches back for generations.”

“I don’t care about that. It’s just bullshit that got my friends killed and my family hurt.”

Peter smirked. “Yet I notice that you’re still here.”

His beta didn’t answer. 

“You could be back on that wretched reservation. You could, even now, take the car we stole and drive away. You could turn yourself in and have your father protect you and clear your name. But you don’t. You want to know why I think you are still here?”

“I’m pretty sure you’re going to tell me.” The beta moved up to the side of the cliff.

“Because we’ve changed. You and I.”

It warmed his heart that he had startled Scott so badly that the young man almost tripped and fell over Lookout Point, but he snagged him by the arm anyway, using his alpha strength to pull him back. 

“When I first bit you, Scott, I wanted a body, a mindless soldier to use so I could get my revenge upon the Argents. That’s all you were to me, which is why I … took shortcuts. When I first bit you, Scott, I became the monster that ruined your life. But you stuck by me, even when you must have hated me. I suspect that in the beginning you just didn’t want anyone else to die — which is so disgustingly you — but you could have left last month, last year, and I would have been perfectly fine, and you didn’t. And to me, you’re not a body anymore.”

“Is that why you didn’t bite anyone else?” Scott asked. “Because you stopped wanting mindless soldiers?”

Peter didn’t really have an answer, but he though the beta deserved one. “I guess you were enough.”

“But we’re still here to kill Kate Argent.”

“Oh, my, yes. We’re going to kill Kate Argent and make sure it sticks.”

The silence fell over the pair of them.

“Moon’s about to hit its zenith.”

Scott grunted. “Why is that important?”

“In our lore, the moon’s power is strongest when it is full, and its effects are most fully felt when it directly above the observer.”

“What do you expect to happen? You expect an army to fight the Argents to fall from the sky?” 

Peter didn’t answer. He waited.

The moon reached its peak and at first it felt to Peter similar to how he felt when he was taking a shower at the Hale House, and some mischievous child would run the hot water elsewhere in the house. His nerves felt shocked and he shivered, but the vision behind his eyes blurred. The cliff face dissolved into nothing and then resolved into a porch. Down the steps to this porch, a forest loomed.

He was at the Hale House rebuilt, standing beneath its eaves looking up the moon. A car pulled up the driveway, a sporty little number, and Stiles Stilinski bounced out. He was alive, just as vivacious as he had always been. 

“Hi honey, I’m home!”


	3. Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Stiles, from his position in the center of the living room of the rebuilt Hale House, glared at the four glass evidence boards arranged about the room. Peter had been surprised by their existence, but it had been quickly explained to him what use his beta put them to. In the week since the full moon and Peter’s arrival in this world, Stiles had taken charge of the investigation of Peter’s reality jumping. He had interrogated Peter extensively on the details of the alternate realities he had experienced and how the transfers had happened. 

Studying his beta, Peter lounged in a leather recliner, waiting for Stiles to start his presentation. The younger man had requested — make that demanded — that Peter sit down and listen to what he’d been able to put together. No one else was in the house except Derek, but he seldom left his bedroom when Peter or Stiles were present. The other betas weren’t the type to hang around when there wasn’t business that needed their direct assistance. The Peter of this world had a pack numbering a half-dozen betas. All-in-all, it was a good size though apparently they were less like a family and more like a gang.

As he waited, Peter noticed his attention drifting. The chair he sat in, the wine he sipped, the clothes he wore, the home that was now indubitably his, all of it felt so comfortable after his poverty adventures with Scott in some other reality’s New Mexico that he could have easily fallen asleep, even after six days to get used to this new world. He had never been more exhausted than after that month. 

But he fought off his lethargy. It really wasn’t a difficult task, as he found that he couldn’t stop looking at his beta. Stiles stood, one hand grasping his chin, studying his own copious notations and systematically curated photographs which spread across all four boards. This Stiles had matured both intellectually and physically, with far greater power due to the Bite. This Stiles had also shed all outward signs of his insecurities. There was no more flailing, no more mugging, and no more hesitation when confronting a truth about himself. 

He had become a fine wolf.

“So, this board has all the information you could give me on what I’m going to call Earth Prime.” He cheekily glanced over his shoulder at Peter, who kept his face carefully blank to show how much he didn’t appreciate the attempt at humor. “I take it you didn’t much listen to me when I talked, did you?”

“Unfortunately, while I’ve tried to completely ignore your babbling about comic books through the years, I’ve been forced to pick up a few things.”

Stiles huffed, clearly annoyed, with Peter’s normal attitude. “You really didn’t think much of me on Earth Prime, did you?”

“Not really, and the feeling, I assure you, was _very_ mutual.”

“That’s going to be frustrating, because I’ve become used to you at least paying some attention to what I have to say.” Stiles winked at him. “On the other hand, I get to enlighten your ignorance on so many things all over again. Silver lining.”

Peter pursed his lips. It appeared from the overly familiar way this Stiles talked to him, that either they had grown quite close or Stiles had grown far more aggressive.

“We have to start at Earth Prime because it’s the one about which you know the most. From you’ve told me, up until two months ago you weren’t aware of any other reality. It’s fascinating: a world incredibly different than this one, because I turned down your very generous offer.”

“We’ve gone over this. There are a lot of differences, but all of them seem to occur only after you said _yes._ ”

A shade of something dark passed over Stiles’ face. “It’s still mind blowing. Scott’s an alpha, however the fuck that happened, and he leads a pack containing Lydia, Derek, some kid named Liam, some kid named Alec, and your daughter, Malia, who is a werecoyote, however the fuck _that_ happened.”

“As well as you, as I’ve told you before.”

“Human me?” Stiles shook his head and turned away, but Peter had put the clues together a few days before. Stiles — this Stiles — didn’t believe that any pack would want him to be a member if he weren’t a werewolf. Peter smirked to himself; maybe Stiles hadn’t completely changed. 

“Why haven’t you gone after her?” Stiles said as he walked over to the Earth Prime board and tapped on the glass.

“Hmmmm?” 

“Malia. Since you know that the divergence happened years after the Tate family accident, then you know where she is — trapped in coyote form in the Preserve. Yet you haven’t even gone looking for her.”

Peter chuckled. “And how do you know I haven’t?” 

“I always know where you are, Peter.” Stiles’ voice was serious, and it even held a bit of a threat.

“There’s no point in me rescuing her if the whole world will change in three weeks. It should be obvious that figuring out what is going on should be my top priority. Is there something else bothering you?”

Stiles did not answer but had already turned to study the second board, one which held far less information. “I’m calling this board the ‘Happy Place with No Monsters.’ No tragic fire. Pedo-Kate in jail. Big Sis Talia still on top. Your entire family still around. Everything is peaches and cream.”

Peter bit back a sarcastic rejoinder to Stiles’ flippant description. He must have hit the dregs in the glass; the taste of the wine had soured. 

“You must have enjoyed it.” Stiles looked over his shoulder at him. “Seeing your family again.”

Peter frowned at the poke. Apparently, Stiles’ cruel streak had survived the Bite as well. 

“No?” Stiles gave Peter his best innocent expression.

“You know I did.” Peter couldn’t stop the growl that pushed its way out of his gut. 

“Chillax, Alpha-Dude, I was just asking, and I wasn’t doing it to be a dick. Completely.”

“Yes, I enjoyed seeing my family.”

Stiles turned back to the board. “Did you look for me?”

“What?” 

“Did you look for me in this second reality? It’s a simple question.”

Peter tilted his head to the side. His beta emotions were hard to read with his face turned away. He couldn’t tell if the question was actually important or if Stiles was experiencing an inconvenient moment of personal anxiety. “I did not.”

“Oh.”

“I have to be honest, spending time with my family was far more important to me than tracking down someone who hated my guts on … Earth Prime. I didn’t have a clue as to where you were, and I didn’t much care. You could have been at Quantico, for all I knew.”

“Yeah. At the FBI.”

“Maybe.” Peter didn’t bother to hide his jab, because Stiles wasn’t making any effort to hide his. Peter always gave as good as he got. “Or you could have been getting an MFA in poetry at Berkeley. Does the fact that you didn’t cross my mind hurt your feelings?”

Stiles scoffed and wandered to the third board. “Your third stop on the reality merry-go-round is a little place I like to refer to as Leaving Las Vegas.” Stiles put a finger on a map of the reservation. “It had to be a thoroughly depressing place, especially considering the fact that I’m not alive. I simply can’t imagine how you survived all the stress and strain caused by living with Scott for a month in a dinky trailer. I’m even more surprised that both of you survived it. I’d bet that Scott snores like a lumberjack convention in any reality.” 

“Be serious.”

“I am being serious.” Stiles snapped without meeting Peter’s eyes. “I’m very serious, and you should know that. Even though you don’t remember this world, you’ve had time to come to grips with alternate realities. I’ve had to learn all this in the last week.”

“And yet, you still haven’t told me what you’ve come up with.”

“I’ll tell you what I told you three days ago: I’d really like to check my work with Alan.”

Peter frowned and shook his head. “I said _no._ ”

“Alpha.” Stiles rolled his eyes in frustration. “I don’t know what your relationship with him was on Earth Prime—”

“There was no relationship. He had shifted his loyalties from my family to your friend.”

Stiles wagged his finger in response. “You know that’s not how it works; alphas don’t inherit Emissaries, but he has acknowledged you here. The truth is that he’s better at this than I am, and, whatever your other experiences with him were elseworld, he has worked with us here for years.”

“According to you, that wasn’t always true. He only agreed to become my Emissary in order to save Scott’s life.”

“Yes, but he’s been as good as his word.” Stiles flailed about. “I’m flattered as hell that you trust my judgment but—”

“But nothing.” Peter put his wine glass down and finally stood up out of the recliner. “It’s not about his trustworthiness or your judgement. It’s about his perspective and what that might mean.”

Stiles fell silent, waiting to hear more. 

“My mistake with Alan — everyone’s mistake with Alan — is that we all assume he’s like us. When it comes to you and me, our personal needs can, and often do, overwhelm principle. We seldom put the common good above our own wants. But with our Emissary, there’s a reason Scott was his protégé; both of them have very strong, very firm beliefs. I would never describe Alan as a soulless monster, but I believe he will always do what he thinks is necessary when his principles demand it.”

“And?” Stiles grew impatient. 

“I think we both agree that reality itself is shifting and that this isn’t a normal occurrence. What possible side effects could be caused by this? How many people’s lives could be threatened by something that seems intricately tied to me? This doesn’t bother you as much as it would bother him.”

“Well …” Stiles began. “Oh.”

“Yes. _Oh._ Alan might know more about what is going on with me than you do, but if the consequences of what’s happening threaten cosmic destruction? I have long ago learned not to underestimate the actions a druid will undertake to protect the Balance.”

“You’re his alpha. Once he acknowledged that, he’s been nothing but loyal.” 

“Emissaries are advisers, not servants. It took me years to figure out the difference, and I’m not going to risk my own wellbeing yet on a loyalty I haven’t directly experienced.”

“Fair enough.” Stiles contemplated that answer. “On the other hand, you’ve taken my loyalty as a given.”

“You’re my beta.” 

Without waiting for a response, Peter left Stiles in the living room, going into the kitchen in order to pour himself another glass of wine. He couldn’t shake the feeling that he was missing something. His time with Scott in New Mexico had been horrible, but it had been educational. He found he wasn’t particularly good at the day-to-day duties of being an alpha. He had thought that his distance from Beta-Scott last month had been due to the terrible conditions in which they found themselves and in their less than stellar history, but Peter had noticed similar tension between him and Beta-Stiles during the last few days, and this world was far more pleasant. 

He didn’t know what to make of the tension, yet he didn’t much care unless it interfered with his goals. He returned to the living room with his glass of wine. “So, tell me what conclusions you’ve managed to draw.”

“Okay.” Stiles held up one finger. “You aren’t doing this.” 

“That was in doubt?”

“Yeah. I don’t put anything past you, Peter, but one of my conclusions is that you aren’t causing it, consciously or subconsciously.”

“I knew that.”

Stiles snorted at him. “Sure you did. As if you were happy with the way Earth Prime turned out and wouldn’t have jumped at the chance to change history.”

“I meant …” Peter paused. He hadn’t been completely happy with how things had turned out, but he hadn’t been exactly unhappy with his original universe, had he? Kate was dead — twice! The Argents were no longer a threat to any werewolves; the Calaveras were crippled for the foreseeable future. He had been rich and free and he was slowly rebuilding the Hale family’s power, starting with Malia, his legacy. There was no Hale alpha, but that wasn’t an insurmountable problem. He had had plans. No, he hadn’t been _unhappy._

“It doesn’t matter what you meant,” Stiles brushed it off. “I also believe that this is a recent development.”

“Well, duh.”

“Don’t be an ass. I mean that your first shift from Earth Prime to the Happy Place with No Monsters was the first manifestation of this phenomenon. I had theorized that the world could have shifted before but you simply hadn’t noticed any changes.”

“Explain it to me.”

Stiles pointed at each board in order. “As far as we’ve been able to put together, each alternate universe was a product of a single divergent event, and all three events were intimately connected to your life in Earth Prime. With all the possible things that could change in the universe — George Washington could have died of scarlet fever as a teenager, the Chinese could have discovered America first, etc. — three divergences occurred one after the other and they all focused on Beacon Hills and you, specifically. To me, that implies that they only recently started.”

Peter nodded. “Okay. So, my recollection of my own actions aside, how do you know I’m not causing it?”

“Because while you knew about you offering me the Bite, and you knew about Kate seducing Derek, you didn’t know about Scott resisting Allison’s suggestion that they make out in an empty school bus.”

“That’s true, and I wouldn’t have cared to find out about it on Earth Prime.”

“I think it’s pretty safe to say that you can’t change something you didn’t know about.” 

“Fair enough.”

“Taking that into account, and taking into account that three similar events indicates a pattern, we can say that this is not a random accident of the universe. Someone is trying to shift reality to a specific ending,” Stiles concluded, “and they are going to keep trying until they get it right.”

“So, any theories on why I’m the only one who is not shifting with the changes?”

“Theories? No. Questions? Yes.”

Peter tapped the side of his glass. “Go on.”

“I don’t know enough yet, and neither do you. How much power does it take to shift an entire reality? Or is it only you being moved from one reality to another? If that is the case, is the Peter from this reality going to another one? What are the requirements for the shift? You’ve already figured out that it happens on the full moon — is that by design or by necessity?”

Frowning, Peter swirled the glass. “You could speculate a little.”

“I really can’t. It would have been useful if you had been dead in at least one of them.”

Peter jerked his head back in shock. “I hope you’re not simply being sarcastic.”

“If you were dead in one of them we would know that an exchange of Peters is not a requirement, which would give us one more clue as to how it works.” 

“I see. Any guess on how to stop it?”

Stiles shook his head. “We still have time.”

The answer was completely unsatisfying. “I had thought that all this …” Peter waved a hand at the glass boards. “All this would have amounted to something. But it seems that all it’s good for is occupying your time.”

“That’s not fair.” His beta scowled at him.

“In less than three weeks you may cease to exist. Let’s not get stuck on what’s fair or not. I’m going to go talk to Derek; I’ve put up with his living ghost act for far too long. When I come back, I want something concrete on which I can act.”

Peter stormed out of the living room and up the stairs.

In this world, he had had the Hale House rebuilt to the same exact layout it had had before. Of course, the other Peter had chosen to eschew his sister’s Bob-Newhart-Show style, but it still managed to evoke memories. 

Those memories left Peter hollow. He had spent a month, recently, with his own family in the original house, so this recreation was a pale echo — a insubstantial legacy. It didn’t help that the house was so big and only he, Derek and Stiles lived in it.

He found himself standing outside of Derek’s room. This Derek kept to himself, avoiding Peter and Stiles almost religiously, usually meeting them only long enough to make it from front door to his bedroom. He took his meals in his room. He only used the laundry or the kitchen when he was alone in the house. As a consequence, Peter hadn’t seen him more than four times in a week and none of those times were longer than five minutes. 

He knocked. “Derek, may I come in?”

The silence lasted so long that Peter almost gave up, but finally he heard Derek answer with an affirmative grunt.

The room was Spartan, consisting of a twin bed, a single chair, and a shelf of books. Everything else must have been hidden in the closet. Derek had had two distinctive personal styles in his life — pre-Kate and post-Kate. Pre-Kate teenage Derek hadn’t been a slob, but he had been full of life. He was interested in sports and music and languages and reading and there were only so many hours in the day to do all the things he wanted to do, so the refuse of those activities created sprawling piles on the floor of his bedroom, cleaned up once a month when a much-aggrieved Talia opened the door and shouted at her son.

Post-Kate Derek denied himself even the appearance of comfort. He did little and owned even less, as if he were eager to minimize his presence. Even after his interactions with the McCall pack and Braeden had helped him heal his emotional trauma, he remained a man with simple tastes, though he didn’t mind purchasing the occasional Italian table or flowering cactus. 

This Derek had remained in his depressing Post-Kate Derek phase. He was clean shaven, his eyes dull and sunken, and his skin very pale. Nothing at all like the Dereks that Peter had seen in the last months. 

“I haven’t seen much of you,” Peter began. 

“I know.”

Peter paused, looking for the words. “I don’t—”

“You’re not the Peter that I’ve known, supposedly.”

“No. I’m not.”

“How do you think that works?” Derek asked, and there was a note of anger in his voice.

Peter took a step back, calculating. “I’m afraid I don’t know.”

“I heard what you said to Stiles. I read his boards when you two were out. I killed you.”

“Not you.”

“Not me.”

“You did a terrible job as alpha.” Peter felt something bubble up out of him. “You were full of anger and guilt, which lead you to trust people you shouldn’t have—”

“You.”

“Yes, me. And not to trust people you should have. Does that make you feel better or worse?”

Derek didn’t answer, but Peter saw something in him relax. 

“I don’t know everything that happened between us here.”

“You killed Laura for power. You killed Kate and her conspirators, but you also killed all the Argents, even the innocent ones. You hurt so many innocent people.”

“But I won.” Peter admitted. “Here, I won. You’re alive. We’re a pack. If I can figure out how to stop the transfer, I won’t be too upset if I have to stay here.”

“So what you did was worth it?”

“How can you ask that?” Peter said. “I didn’t start this! I didn’t burn our family to ash — and neither did you, by the way. The people who did it are dead. All the people who threatened us are dead. Everything I did was worth it.”

A shade of rage passed over Derek’s face, coupled with such exquisite misery. Derek had never healed. Peter remembered what he was like after he came back to help Scott fight Monroe. He had to say, as much as that Derek wasn’t his biggest fan, he preferred that Derek to this one.

“Why not wait?”

“For what?”

Derek looked out the window. “Stiles doesn’t know if you’re jumping between worlds or if the world is changing around you. If it’s the latter, why not wait for a better one?”

Peter’s shock at those words robbed him of words.

“Why not wait for a world where you didn’t have to kill Laura, because she passed the power to you willingly? Why not wait for a world where Ennis told me no when I asked him to Bite Paige? Who says you won’t return to the world Stiles calls the Happy Place with no Monsters?”

Peter stared at him and then finally went over and reached out his hand. Derek shied away from his touch. 

“Because I don’t believe that any universe is a kind one. I don’t believe that any universe is a fair one. If I want something, I have to take it. If I need something to happen, I have to force it to happen. I spent six years, cognizant but awake, in what other people thought was a coma. If Balance exists, where was mine? I took Laura’s power and the first person I Bit was someone who would thwart me at every turn, who would ruin every plan I have until my plans no longer mattered.”

Derek’s eyes glistened. “You intend to get your way, no matter who it ruins?”

“No matter who it ruins.” Peter said, before he turned and left the room. 

Peter didn’t have any regret to spare for this Derek, and, after all, it seemed Derek already had enough of his own anyway. Peter was going to take control of this situation, and that required no excessive sentimentality. It would this evening, however, require copious amounts of wine, until he felt at least a little buzzed. He was a civilized werewolf.

He retrieved his glass from the living room, where the boards still stood but Stiles had gone away, and went into the kitchen. He poured the rest of this bottle out and then fetched another bottle out of the cellar. He was going to need it.

Stiles was waiting for him in the kitchen when he came back up.

“Where did you go?” Peter asked with an air of bored nonchalance, putting the new bottle on the counter.

“Outside.” The words were said around fangs.

“Any particular reason?” 

“I heard everything you said to Derek.”

Peter snorted. “And?”

“You realize that’s more words he’s spoken to you in the last year?” Stiles accused. 

“Not to me. To the me who belongs here.”

Now it was Stiles turn to scoff. “You’re the same person. Why do you think that I haven’t excluded the idea that it’s not you moving between worlds, it’s the world rearranging itself around you?”

Peter turned to the refrigerator. “I wonder what I’ll make for dinner.”

“You’re still the same, Peter. We talked about what was different, but you are always you.”

“Steak? Steak sounds great.”

“Are you trying to blow me off?”

Peter turned around forcefully. “I’m not going to listen to you babble about things you can’t understand. You aren’t like you were in the other worlds, so neither would I be.”

“Small miracles.”

“I’d be more willing to entertain your sarcasm once our work actually produces something worth acting upon.”

Stiles eyes turned brilliant blue. “As a matter of fact, I do have a concrete suggestion. Even if we figure out how to prevent it from happening, I don’t think you should stop the next shift.”

“Oh? Why not?”

“Because if things don’t change, I’m pretty sure I’m going to try to kill you.”

Peter let his own eyes turn red. “That would be unwise, but would you mind if I asked you why?”

“You told Derek that you didn’t care who you ruined as long as you got your way, and I finally realized, after so many years, that you ruined me.”

“Did I? You don’t seem ruined.”

“Ever since I learned the stories of those other worlds, I can’t stop thinking about it. Here, I don’t have any friends. I don’t have Scott. I don’t have Lydia. Here, I don’t have any family. Dad won’t talk to me because I sided with a killer.”

“I only killed the responsible ones.”

“Do you think that the sheriff cares about that? It’s been years since I had a real conversation with him.”

“But you have pack.”

“Pack? Those thugs? They’re fucking morons. Derek won’t have anything to do with me. All I have is you.”

Peter shrugged. “I believe I’m quite entertaining.”

“Not funny and not the point. _All_ I have is you. You pay for the food I eat, the clothes I wear, the house I live in, and the cars I drive. I didn’t finish high school, because you had to stop the Argents. I didn’t go to the college I wanted, because you needed your pack nearby. You’ve become where my life begins and ends. And I just stood there and heard you say that you would get what you wanted no matter who you ruined.”

Peter poured Stiles a glass of wine, slowly. “I think you’re upset because you realize there were other options, but you can’t change your decisions now. After a time, I think you’ll calm down.”

“You’d better hope so.” Stiles waved off the glass of wine.

Peter watched him stalk away. Far from being angry, he was pleased. Wolves were supposed to be dangerous, and the best alphas always had to keep an eye on their most ambitious betas. He would do his best to stay in this world.


	4. V is for Vendetta (Part One)

Things were too quiet. Peter sat in the back of a Starbucks with a cup of coffee and a bagel watching the flow of people in the coffee house and the flow of traffic outside. Things were far too quiet, and he had long ago recognized that he felt more at home in the exciting clangor of chaos.

The Hunter’s Moon had come and gone, and he had been unable to stop the shift, as Stiles had predicted. When the moon reached its zenith, he had been standing in the living room of the Hale House when the flux happened, and the last thing he had seen of the previous world had been Stiles’s face looking curious and Derek’s face looking resigned. Peter regretted parting with that version of Stiles under those particular conditions. 

That he felt regret nagged at him, and he couldn’t put his finger on why.

Much as his arrival in this new reality nagged at him. It broke what little he had understood of the rules. He had appeared in the exact same spot from which he had left, but instead of a living room, it had been only a grassy meadow. Even the foundations of the Hale House had been dug up and removed. If the lay of the Preserve hadn’t been etched into his mind, he would have had a tough time recognizing where he was. His inspection had revealed that there hadn’t even been vehicle traffic near that location for years.

He had also been wearing the same clothes, which was also a change. Stiles had encouraged him to take any difference in a shift at more than face value. Something was definitely different about this world than the others. 

The first resource he needed to secure was a base from where he could explore this new world, so he had headed to a familiar nearby motel. The credit cards he had brought with him no longer worked — understandably — but he managed to rent a room with the cash he had on hand. His eyes had shone their killer blue in the mirror, so he wasn’t an alpha in this reality. Otherwise, he seemed exactly as he had been in the previous world. 

A search through the phone book had been mostly fruitless. No Hales. No McCalls. No Stilinskis. Surprisingly enough, he did find an A. Argent, and the weirdness didn’t stop there. The address was in the worst part of town, in an apartment block which might have been the cheapest in the entire city. Peter would hold off before he paid a visit. Alan Deaton home address wasn’t in the book, but he had been unlisted in Peter’s original reality, and the Beacon Hills Animal Clinic still existed. The Whittemores, the Martins, and the Tates still lived in town at their usual addresses, and he found listings for both the Geyers and the Hewitts, though he had never bothered to learn their addresses so he couldn’t tell if they had moved. He had never bothered to learn the last names of the rest of Scott’s pack, which was unfortunate.

Given the possibilities, he had little choice but to visit the clinic. Most of the pack members he had some sort of history with — and enough familiarity with to manipulate -- would be away at college in October. Of the remaining possibilities, Alan would be the best choice.

The animal hospital, he had noticed, was a little dingier than he remembered. He wouldn’t exactly call it run down, but it hadn’t been kept up with any degree of enthusiasm. When Peter had entered, Alan had been talking to a woman and her cocker spaniel in a pet cone. In the middle of a sentence, the veterinarian had looked up and seen Peter, which caused him to falter in his speech. The woman had glanced over her shoulder, trying to figure out what was going on; she must have been as used to Deaton’s unflappability as Peter was. After fifteen seconds of total speechlessness, a rattled Deaton had resumed his instructions to the woman.

That didn’t seem like a good indicator for the state of the world.

Eventually, Deaton finished relaying his instructions for Sweetum’s care, and the woman ushered herself out of the clinic. Instead of greeting him directly, Alan took a step toward the back room, craned his neck to examine much of the work area as possible. Vaguely satisfied, her returned to the counter and grabbed a pen and paper. 

Peter had opened his mouth to speak, but Deaton had shook his head, sharply. “I see what your problem is, ma’am.” His voice had been pitched slightly louder than was the habit of any Alan he had met. He shoved the pad of paper at him: SPY IN BACK.

Peter nodded to show he understood while he sharpened his hearing, but as usual the mountain-ash reinforcement of the clinic made everything muffled. 

“Why don’t I make an appointment for you next week?” Deaton had dug into a drawer in the counter and had pulled out a card. It was a Starbucks gift card. “That’ll be fine. I’m sorry I can’t help you right away, but I’m booked pretty solid.”

Peter shoved the gift card into his hands and then wrote 7:00 PM on the pad. Peter had leaned forward, pulled the top page off to show he understood, folded the paper up, and put it into his pocket. With a tip of an imaginary hat, he had left the druid to his animals.

So that was how he had found himself waiting in a Starbucks. He sniffed at his coffee and wondered if Starbucks had made it a corporate standard to only buy their coffee from plantations that watered their crops with orangutan piss. He waited until his hopeful ally arrived. Given the fraught nature of their brief interview, he was willing to be patient. It was a good thing, as Deaton didn’t manage to make it there until a little before 7:30.

Without preamble, Deaton slid into the seat next to him, rather than across from him. It startled Peter until he realized that the man wanted to make sure he had a clear view of the street outside. 

“I don’t have much time, so let’s spare ourselves the pleasantries. How is it possible that you’re alive?”

“I take it I’m not supposed to be?” Peter leaned forward. If this was true, it would, as Stiles pointed out, helped expand his knowledge of what was happening. “And what’s with the _Three Days of the Condor_ tactics, Alan?”

“No, you’re not supposed to be. While I didn’t watch you die, I watched the aftermath.” Alan hissed to him, lowering his voice so that it would almost be inaudible to human beings. “Your first resurrection was clever and made sense once we had all the facts. But to do it again without having access to Lydia.”

Peter took a drink of his coffee. “It’s not as confusing … no, it’s just as confusing as you might think it is. I’m not who you think I am.”

“I’ll hope that you’ll explain that.”

“I’m Peter Hale, but I’m not your Peter Hale. This isn’t my reality.” 

Deaton narrowed his eyes as he tried to parse that out but suddenly his eyes widened. “Go to the bathroom. Now. Don’t argue.”

It had been one of the few times in his life that Peter did as he was told without any argument. He felt it was awfully out of character, but he had never — and he meant never — seen Alan Deaton so thoroughly shaken. It was enjoyable on one level, but it didn’t speak too highly about the world in which he found himself.

He put his ear to the door of the restroom, listening as well as was able.

“Hello, Dr. Deaton.”

“What can I do for you, Gabe?”

“I was checking to see if you were all right.” Even from his position in the restroom, he could hear the slight hint of a threat in the younger man’s voice.

“I’m fine. I decided to get a cup of coffee.”

“You know he doesn’t like it when you change your routine.”

Alan’s voice contained subtle but very noticeable sarcasm. “I’ve found that he doesn’t like much of anything. I’ve assume you’ve already reported this to him.”

“Come on, Dr. Deaton. He wants to see you.”

When Peter heard the cafe’s front door open, he followed without stopping to get his coffee. From what he hoped was a safe distance, he watched Gabe herding Deaton into the veterinarian’s own car; he could make out the unmistakable outline of a gun under Gabe’s jacket. It would be dangerous to follow them, but this was Peter’s chance to find out what was going on, especially if the druid was under such ridiculous surveillance. 

When the car pulled away, he rushed out to the street; there was no time to lose. Someone Peter didn’t know was getting out of his Ford pickup, and the strange had his keys in his hand. With a blur of motion, Peter snatched the keys and tossed the other man across the bed of the truck and onto the sidewalk. The man barely had time to hear Peter’s half-hearted “Sorry” before the werewolf was driving down the street. 

If Deaton noticed they were being followed, he didn’t bother to try to evade. After he had given it some thought, Peter vaguely recognized this Gabe from Monroe’s reign of terror; he had been the student who had shot up the McCall house. Peter decided to be extra careful; that type of violence didn’t arise out of nothing, and it would be truly unfortunate to lose an ally. Luckily, this reality’s version of the veterinarian was as careful a driver as the one he had known before, so he never went over the speed limit. It didn’t take long for them to reach their destination: the Argent bunker.

In his prime reality, this was where Gerard and Kate had met their permanent ends. Consequently, it was one of Peter’s most favorite places on earth. He had sometimes driven out there to simply bask in the glory of knowing the details of their ignominious and well-deserved ends. Now, he would use that information effectively, parking a good distance down the road and making his way to what he hoped was a safe entrance. 

While there were two main doors, both would be undoubtedly watched by hunters. There was, however, an underground and seldom-used entrance. It took Peter only a few minutes to locate the gate in the woods and snap the chain before heading in. With any luck, he should be able to reach the central building with no one the wiser.

It turned out that he had no luck. A pair of hunters stopped him about one hundred feet in from the gate, pointing assault weapons at him. “Stop where you are!”

Peter raised his hands immediately. If he acted harmless, perhaps they would venture too close. “I’m stopping. No need to shoot.”

Only one of them approached, unfortunately. “Who are you?”

“I was exploring an abandoned grate I found in the woods. I didn’t realize it was private property.”

Peter’s charm seemed lost on the pair. They also seemed to be disturbingly competent. One of them sniffed the air. “He’s a wolf.”

“A what?” 

The hunter approaching him flashed electric blue eyes at him to show he wasn’t falling for his act. “Shift, and we’ll shoot you.” 

Frustratingly, they took care while surrounding him. They seemed to know exactly what he was capable of and took the precautions only people who were carefully trained would take. They were hunters. And wolves.

“Aw, hell.” Peter swore to himself.

Down the dimly hit halls of the bunker, he heard the voice of the hunter-wolves’ leader long before he saw him. “So tell me, Alan, did you break our agreement?”

“I did not,” the veterinarian replied in his usual calm voice. “Since you keep me under constant surveillance, I’m sure your men can tell you that I’ve done nothing to jeopardize your power.”

Peter turned the corner to find Gerard Argent facing off against Alan Deaton, eyeing him skeptically. Five more armed men — no, five more armed werewolves — including Gabe and stood around him. Peter immediately calculated that he didn’t have a chance of fighting his way out. But there are other ways to win other than hopeless struggle.

Everyone in the room turned to see the new arrival; most didn’t know who Peter was. Gerard, for his part, was shocked only for a moment. He wiped the emotion off his face and turned back to the druid. “How is this possible?”

“It’s not,” Alan replied, taking the slightest of slight enjoyment from Gerard’s discomfiture. “I have no explanation for it.”

“I take it you’re surprised to see me.”

“Considering I cut you in half and set fire to your body, yes.” Gerard sneered. He pointed one finger at the shelf. “There’s your bottom half.”

Peter smiled widely. “A place of honor. I’m flattered.”

Emerging from the other entrance to the room, Jackson Whittemore entered almost completely silently. He came to rest at Gerard’s right hand. There was something definitely wrong with the younger man; he seemed subdued and dull.

“Peter Hale.” The old man spoke his last name like it was a curse. “You’ll tell me how you come to be here, if you know what’s good for you.”

“You know something?” Peter winked at the angry Argent. “I don’t think I will.”

Gerard was on him in an instant, roaring in his face and his eyes glowing bloody red. The eyes of everyone else in the room glowed blue in return, except for Jackson’s. His eyes turned the baleful greenish-yellow of an alpha kanima. As much as he tried to stop it, Peter’s treacherous heart quickened to panic, and he felt his eyes glow hot. 

Instantaneously, the old Argent was under control once again. “You should be thankful I don’t like mysteries, or part of me would kill you again right now to see if I could make it stick this time.”

Peter got up off the ground from where Gerard had knocked him.

Alan tried to draw Gerard’s attention. “I don’t think I have to tell you that acting rashly in a situation like this would be very dangerous.”

The old man twisted his head in an accusatory glare. “No, you don’t.” Jackson stood directly next to Peter, cold dead eyes watching him. 

“Then I would suggest we learn what we can.”

Gerard snarled more like an emaciated bulldog than a werewolf and then nodded. “Chris!” His shout echoed through the room. 

At Gerard’s bellow, Chris Argent came out of a side room, head hung low like a whipped dog. And he was, Peter could tell immediately — a whipped dog.

“Take this undead abomination to a cell. Watch him.” 

Chris’s eyes drifted up and widened. “But …”

“I didn’t ask for your commentary. Get him out of my sight. Now.” Gerard turned away. “You and I, doctor, are going to have a very involved chat.”

Deaton focused all his attention on Gerard, very specifically not looking Peter in the face. That was somewhat of a relief. This was not a happy place, but at least Peter could count on the druid’s discretion. If he had wanted to save himself by throwing Peter under the bus, he could have done it already. 

Jackson pushed him, still sans expression, toward the corridor from which Chris had come. Taking a position behind him, and armed with a gun, Chris led Peter alone towards the cells. Peter could smell the wolf’s bane on the bullets as much as he could smell the stress on Christopher Argent’s skin. They left the main chamber and entered a wing that had no other exit but the one they just went through.

“So, Chris.” Peter said amiably. “I’d like to say it’s lovely to see you again, but that would be a lie.”

“Shut up.”

“Last time I talked to you, you were a significantly happier person.”

“I said shut up.”

Peter passed the first of the holding cells, but he didn’t have time to wait. He needed information. “Didn’t your family have some sort of code about killing yourself if you became a werewolf? Isn’t that how dear Victoria shuffled off this mortal coil?” He played his cards carefully.

In a split second, powered by molten rage, a frothing Chris had him up against the wall with the pistol up underneath Peter’s chin. His eyes blazed a surprising gold, his fangs had dropped, he was snarling, and his claws drew little pinpricks of blood through Peter’s shirt. Peter simply gazed at him. He knew Chris wouldn’t tear him apart, but it was nice to know how easy it was to trigger the man. 

Chris mastered himself until he was back to human form, but he didn’t lower the gun. “Yes, it was. She kept to the Code. We both did, until the Code became meaningless.”

“The Argent I knew would never let the Code become nothing.”

The words had their powerful effect. Peter could read the long-standing resignation in Chris’s eyes, the revulsion he felt for his situation. He could feel that the man wanted to do something, anything to change what had happened. Peter could use that.

“I can’t set you free.” Chris said after a moment.

“Wouldn’t think of asking you to. We have enough history between us to never be friends … but somehow I doubt you see me as the greater evil right now.”

“I’ve done what I had to do for the one person that matters.”

Peter chuckled. “Allison. She does inspire people, does she not? And I have a feeling she’s not part of Gerard’s pack, is she?”

Chris quickly pulled the gun away and opened a cell door. “No.” 

“Yet, she’s still in town. Still in danger. How did it come to this?”

“You don’t really understand my father if you have to ask that.” Chris motioned with the gun. “Everyone has weaknesses, and he’s the best there is at manipulating them.”

Peter calculated for a moment whether he had a chance to overpower Chris. Perhaps, but that left the problem of getting past Gerard, hunter-wolves and an alpha kanima; he was good, but he wasn’t that good. Instead, he decided to wait, be cooperating, and learned as much as he could. He stepped into the cell. If things went to hell, then he only had to wait a month for the world to shift again. 

His submission seemed to pay off as Chris didn’t seem in a hurry to shut the door. 

“He uses Allison to control you. He even made you take the Bite, but why would he do that?” Peter raised his hand. “Ahh, the Calaveras. He may have defeated my family, but he still needs all the help he can get with the other hunter families, since most established hunters would love to gun you down. So Allison keeps you in line, but what keeps Allison …” Peter laughed out loud. “Where is my errant beta?”

“Cell down the hall.” 

“Unfortunate for him. I suspect that the deal Alan has with Gerard involves Scott as well. Humor me, since I’m going to be very bored, very soon. Tell me again how your father become an alpha?” Peter felt it would be important to figure out the single decision that would vary this from the prime earth, if the pattern held so far. 

“Only if you tell me how you survived.”

“Deal.”

“You may have lost some memory; you were there when it happened. After you killed Kate, Gerard came to town, supposedly to kill you.”

“I do seem to inspire that response.”

Chris didn’t even chuckle. He really was a whipped dog. “What he really came here to get the Bite and then become an alpha. He had late-stage cancer.”

“I pieced that together myself — it was how he succeeded in making that happen which I’m curious about.”

“Seems that Scott had detected the cancer after my father tried to intimidate him by stabbing a sixteen-year-old boy in the gut with a hunting knife.” Chris’s revulsion seeped into this tone. “Scott went and told your nephew what he had discovered; I assumed that was when you learned about it. Turns out, your nephew was an idiot.”

Peter shrugged. “So it’s been made apparent, from time to time.”

“He decided that he would take his pack and attack my house a few days after the police station assault.” Chris looked sick with the memory. “Stiles and Scott couldn’t talk him out of it. It was Derek, you, Derek’s betas and Scott against Allison, Gerard and me … and Jackson, which I assumed your pack didn’t know.” 

“Well, I can imagine the outcome of the battle, since I don’t remember it. Tell me, there were no … aftereffects of the Bite for Gerard?”

“He was older and he had cancer, so the Bite was touch and go, but my father’s like a cockroach. He’ll survive almost anything.” 

Peter nodded. The difference in this world was that Scott had decided to trust Derek with news of Gerard’s cancer. And Derek, like he had done ever since Peter had died, had fucked it up big time.

“So what are you going to do about all this?” Peter demanded.

“What?”

“What. Are. You. Going. To. Do. About. It? Chris, you can’t be pleased to watch your father run your family, your traditions, your code into the ground.”

“Do you think I haven’t tried?” 

“Honestly, no.” Peter said smugly. “I’ve seen people like you, paralyzed with remorse. You’re so lost in your guilt for letting your father do terrible things to innocents that you haven’t begun to think of ways to change it. I’m sure your regret is very comforting to you, sitting in your room as your wife rots in the ground and your daughter fritters her life away waiting for you to grow a pair.”

The thing about an abused animal is that it comes to expect the abuse. Chris said nothing but puts his hand on the door handle. 

“When you’re ready, come to me,” Peter purrs. “And we’ll think of a way to put things right. Because this is not my world, and I know that this is not the end for this one.”

“When did you become someone who cares about what’s right?” Chris rejoins, bitterly. “When did you become someone who cares about working together with your enemies?”

Peter stared at him, speechless. Sometimes an abused animal turns and bites. If he was going to use Chris to get out of this, then he had to give him an answer, no matter how painful it would be for the both of them. His eyes slid down the hall to other cells.

“You get defeated enough times by someone who does care … well, there’s truth to the old saying, if you can’t beat him, join him. I’ll be waiting Chris. Just don’t make me wait too long.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Three Days of the Condor_ was a 1975 spy thriller starring Robert Redford, Faye Dunaway and Max Von Sydow.


	5. V is for Vendetta (Part Two)

It turned out that Peter only had to endure approximately two days of incredible boredom of being locked in a dark cell. He had learned the pattern very quickly: two more-or-less alert guards came to deliver his meals twice a day and remove his bucket once a day. Otherwise, he was left alone in the dark, so he had plenty of time to think over the things he had learned. He recalled everything that the alternate Stiles had put together and reconciled it with all this new information, all the while studying the drab concrete walls of his cell as much as he could in the absence of light.

In this world, he had been dead, so the transformation did not require an exchange. Like the second world, the triggering event was not something that Peter had been privy to in the primary world, so it confirmed Stiles’ conclusion that this was someone else’s doing. He went over the triggering events in his head, working out scenario after scenario.

It should have kept him busy, but with apologies to Abbé Faria, mental stimulation alone was not sufficient to keep him entertained. More than once, Peter drifted off to sleep when he was working on a puzzle, awakening to unfamiliar sounds from the hallway or when the guards opened the door. During the morning of his third day of captivity, he was disturbed by someone else, someone who surprised him.

“Wake up, Peter.” 

He blinked rapidly at the bright light in the room, strange to him as it was brighter than a werewolf needed to see. A recognizable woman was holding an electric lantern over his head. 

“Why, Allison, good morning. You look absolutely terrible.”

Allison indeed looked vastly different than the last time he had seen her, which was when she had Tasered him in Derek’s loft. Instead of the long wavy brown hair he remember, her hair had been shaped into a mutilated bob that made her look like a French prostitute ravaged by consumption. There were dark circles under her eyes, hidden by a laughable attempt at makeup. She wore a practical beige pantsuit, the type of clothing worn by someone who had to look professional but really didn’t care if they succeeded at it or not.

Her response to his jab was glib but it carried in its tone so much exhaustion that it almost made Peter wince. “And you look like you’re breathing.”

“That is true. To what do I owe the honor of this visit?”

“I want to know what’s going on.”

Peter smirked, giving her a toothy grin. “Why don’t you ask your Pop-Pop?”

Allison gritted her teeth as her body tensed. The Allison that he knew might have once been vulnerable to her grandfather’s manipulations but had long since matured past that. He didn’t know this one. She could choose to react by hurting him physically — the one he knew had certainly been capable of that — or she could whirl about on her depressingly bourgeois tan flats and stalk out of the room. But she didn’t, and honestly, it was what Peter should have expected. No matter which world, Allison Argent would always be fierce, and she would never back down when there was something she thought that she had to do. 

“Gerard and I speak as little as humanly possible.”

“It seems that these days you’re the only member of your family who can do anything as humanly as possible.”

Allison’s jaw tightened and her eyes blazed. “I’m here to ask you if what you told my father was sincere.”

Peter’s eyes slid toward the door and Allison shook her head. 

“My father is keeping watch out in the hallway. He’ll let me know if others approach, and I’m sure you’ve studied your cell enough to know if you’re being monitored.”

“I have studied it. You’re brave to come in here with an uncontrolled werewolf. I could kill you as I killed your aunt.”

She didn’t even blink. 

“As for what I told Chris, I am very sincere.”

Allison crossed her arms. “Prove it to me.”

Peter considered how he wanted to play the game. The truth seemed to be the most fun. “I’m not from this reality. My history does not match yours. I died only once, which is how I am seemingly back from the dead now.”

Silence was replaced eventually be a grim chuckle. “While I wouldn’t put it past you, I think that’s simply too outrageous to be a lie. Let me guess — everyone else we know is dead in that other reality?”

“No. Just you.”

Once again, Allison was stoic, as Peter expected. Instead of shock or alarm, she cocked her head to the side, examining him.

“I’m kidding. Other people have died as well, including your aunt and your grandfather.” 

“So why would you leave that world to come to this one?”

“It wasn’t voluntary, I assure you.” Peter saw no reason to put her more at ease. “But I’m here now, and I don’t really like how this particular history played itself out. Why don’t you and I change it?”

“To what?”

“To someplace where your mother’s death is no longer a footnote on your grandfather’s path to power. Where your Code matters once again. Where you can live a real life rather than just survive.”

Allison nodded in agreement. “You sound like you have a plan.”

“I do. We kill Gerard and his mindless thugs. We replace him with a new alpha.”

“Well, gee, Peter, it’s not like anyone ever thought of that,” Allison said sarcastically. “And who, I wonder, would you like to replace Gerard as alpha?”

Peter hesitated, surprising himself. It had been years since he had had a chance to take the alpha power from anyone. He still wanted it; down deep beneath the skin, he could feel the call to power. He could insist that it be the price for his cooperation. After all, it had become apparent that no one here knew how to defeat Jackson. That demand was probably what Allison was expecting. Yet, he wasn’t ready to risk everything as he had been before. Putting his desire for power first might insure that Gerard remained alpha, and that thought did not sit at all well. 

He calculated. He bit his tongue. He swallowed the bile.

“I think that your boyfriend would be the best candidate.”

At least Peter had the satisfaction of seeing Allison unsettled. “You really mean that.”

“I do.”

She took a deep breath. “You aren’t actually from this world.”

“No. I told you that, remember?”

“Scott has been Gerard’s prisoner for five years. He hasn’t seen his mother or Stiles or anyone other than Gerard, his goons, my father, Alan or me for all that time. He hasn’t seen the sun. The only reason he wasn’t murdered when Gerard took power was because Deaton and I promised our cooperation if he wasn’t. I’ve visited him twice a month — one hundred and eighteen times — and I think that my visits are the only thing keeping him from becoming completely feral. He would snap under the responsibilities of being an alpha, even if you could get him to kill my grandfather.”

Peter tilted his head to the side. “Well …”

Allison glanced back at the hallway. “I’m running out of time for today. We’ll cross the bridge about who gets to be alpha when I feel a little more confident that we have a chance of victory. And right now we don’t — as long as he controls Jackson, winning is impossible.”

“Ahh. And that’s where you need me. I know how to save him.”

“Save who?”

“Jackson. I know how to break the kanima’s curse. I’ve done it before.”

“How?” Allison’s eyes narrowed.

“Do you know where Lydia Martin is?”

“Eichen House.” 

Peter clucked his tongue. “There’s your first mission. Find a way to get her out.”

There was a play of emotions of Allison’s face, a mixture of loathing, determination and maybe the first echo of hope. “Okay. Why not? It’s not like you’re going to get away free if this goes to hell.”

Yet the moon would turn eventually. Peter smiled in response. “You might be surprised.”

**~*~**

“Of all the many different times I’ve been tortured, this one has been very disappointing. I’m only have to give this two out of five stars. It’s unimaginative, the decor’s bland …”

Gerard sneered in response. “Hit him again.”

Gabe turned the dial on the equipment, shocking Peter so hard that his mouth filled with blood where his teeth had torn open the inside of his cheek. The current flowed for maybe fifteen seconds, or thirty seconds, or forty-five seconds. Then it ended as suddenly as it began.

“The help is uninspired,” Peter bit out. 

“Are you going to tell me how you happen to be alive?” Gerard demanded. 

“Why would I? The moment I tell you what you want to know, I die,” Peter responded as if Gerard were an idiot. “There’s no motivation for me to be talkative.”

Gerard took a knife off the table. It wasn’t a very big one, and it wouldn’t kill something like a werewolf with just a simple stab, but Peter was guessing that was the point. In the back of the room, Deaton and Chris, flanked by one of the wolf-hunter-goons Gerard had created, stood stoic and silent. 

The knife slid into Peter’s stomach while the alpha narrated. “Not deep, but with the amount of current being pushed through you, even a werewolf will eventually bleed out from wounds like this,” Gerard observed. “After all, I don’t really need to know how you are alive again. I could just kill you and make sure it sticks this time.”

“But without that knowledge, how could you possibly be sure? Wouldn’t that be a horrible way to live?” Peter mugged at Gerard. “Perpetually having to keep one eye open for the return of the man who mostly killed your daughter.”

“Mostly killed?” Gerard wondered in spite of himself. “What do you mean by that?”

Peter grinned a nasty, bloody grin. _“Spoilers.”_

The alpha turned away, flipping the bloody knife to Gabe, who caught it and put it away. Gerard had selected his pack well: men with just enough imagination and sadism to enjoying using their power against others but not enough intelligence to realize that they were being used in turn. There would always be shallow thugs who preferred to let others do their thinking as long as they got a rush from stomping on the faces of others. 

Gerard continued to pace and thankfully did not signal for the current to be resumed, so achingly, the wound in Peter’s stomach slowly healed itself. Peter forced himself to remain silent, as much as he loved ringing Gerard’s bells.

“If I have the measure of your character, Hale, you might be willing to tell me other things. You’re not a glutton for pain.”

“Drat. Betrayed by my lack of morals once again. But I’m listening.”

“I will get the secret of how you’re alive out of you, eventually, but we can have a conversation about other things, and you’ll spend at least one day without being tortured.”

“Well, that certainly sounds more fun than the alternative, Gerard. Yet, you aren’t known for being scrupulously truthful.”

Gerard shrugged. “You have your senses, Peter, and you have your obvious extensive knowledge of your personality. How much do you trust your own judgment? On the other hand, if you lie to me, I’ll cut off an extremity.”

“The Araya Special? Been there. Done that.” The words came out before Peter was quite ready for it. He kept his ragged smile up, but inward he cursed at himself. This wasn’t a teenager with which he was playing.

“Interesting.” The alpha had not missed it. “So does a conversation sound more interesting than twenty-thousand volts?”

“Tons.”

“Then by all means, Peter, go ahead.”

“So, why hasn’t Deucalion and his Power Rangers shown up to put a crimp in your style?”

Gerard chuckled in good humor. “He did. Hung around Beacon Hills for six months looking for a fight.” 

“How did you avoid it?”

“I took my toys and went to France. So, how did you know about the Alpha Pack?”

“Everyone had heard rumors about them.” Peter said nonchalantly. 

“Come now, shall we get to the chopping so early? You were quite dead when they arrived.”

“You forget that the Alpha Pack formed because Deucalion became differently abled. My sister was present for most of that. As were you, if I remember correctly.”

“True.” Gerard’s eyes glittered. “I’ll deal with him eventually.”

Peter paused, considering. “As competent as your minions seem to be, he has more power than you.”

“An alpha pack is inherently unstable, which was how I was able to out-wait him. He has to keep moving, keep growing. He can’t afford to become complacent or the members of his pack start thinking about what they want, rather than what he wants. I went for reliability over raw power.”

“Personal agency is such a burden, isn’t it?”

Gerard chuckled without humor. “If you weren’t a Hale, Peter, I’d make a pitch for you to join my pack. But I’m not senile.”

“No. You’re not. You better make sure I don’t escape, Gerard. I’m the last Hale.” This was an absolute lie, but if Cora was out there, and he felt that she was, and Malia was out there, then all was not lost. “There’s not much left for me but your death.”

Gerard wasn’t the slightest bit offended or even angry. “You won’t be leaving here, of that I’m sure. We’ll talk again tomorrow, and if you are as informative as you were today, maybe you won’t have to be shocked quite so hard.”

“Hope springs eternal …”

**~*~**

Peter sat with his back to the cell door. It wasn’t particularly comfortable, but it was more comfortable than standing with his face pressed to the door. When being held captive by well-trained werewolves, Peter had to take every precaution to avoid being overheard. Chris Argent was on the other side of the door; Peter couldn’t tell if he was standing, sitting or kneeling. In their whispered dialogue, they made violent plans.

Those plans were in their earliest stages. They had only determine one thing — that they would strike during the time of Allison’s next visit to Scott. Deaton would also arrange his monthly visit for the same day. It would be during the week before the full moon. 

“I still think you should take the chance to take out as many of Gerard’s wolves as you can before the attack,” Peter said with emphasis. “The less we’re outnumbered, the better.”

Chris didn’t answer. 

“Hmmm?”

There was still no answer from the hunter-turned-werewolf. 

“Earth to Chris?”

“Oh? I’m sorry.”

“Something is obviously bothering you. I can hear it through the door.”

There was another pause. 

“Not getting cold feet, are you?”

“No. You know me better than that. But I’ll admit it takes some effort to contemplate murdering my own blood.”

“It’s easier than you might suspect.”

Chris grunted his disapproval.

“All you have to do, Chris, is forget about everything that was good about him.” Peter stared across the dark room at a point far away. “When I spent six years in that coma, I forgot. I made myself forget. So when the time came, it was as easy for me to kill my own as it was to kill your sister.”

Silence. 

“I guess I’m not very good at the pep talk thing, am I? If we’re going to be working together, we need to be honest, and I’m trying to get you ready to do what has to be done. What we’re contemplating is mass murder. There’s no two ways to go about that. The key is that you have to get it into your mind that it is both necessary and justified.”

“Necessary?”

“Yes. Your father isn’t going to stop. He’s not going to be content to castle here in Beacon Hills for the rest of his life. People with his level of ambition and his lack of ethics don’t ever stop.”

Chris’s voice was heavy with acceptance. “True.”

“He’ll expand his pack until its maximum size, then he’ll arm them with every piece of advanced weaponry he can get his hands on. Then he’ll start a conquest of the supernatural. He’ll do it, because he has nothing else to do. Werewolf packs aren’t inherently aggressive because pack is family, an end to itself. He had a family, and he threw it away.”

“There was a time when he hadn’t yet. He was my dad once.”

“No. I’m sorry, Chris, but no. I know, because I’m a little like that, too. I had a family. I had Laura and Derek.” And Cora and Malia. “But I put what I wanted, what I needed personally, above family. The difference between you and me is that killing Laura was neither necessary nor justified. I did have every reason to be impatient, but I was still impatient. You’ve put up with Gerard’s tyranny for five years.”

“Have you stopped claiming insanity?”

Peter laughed. “Of course not. I was emotionally compromised by any definition of the term. It doesn’t mean that I can’t recognize what a terrible thing it was to do, and it doesn’t mean that I cannot — now — express real remorse.”

Chris grunted.

“And you’ll have to do the same, Chris. You’ll have to live with your unwillingness to handle your father and what it’s going to make you have to do.”

“And Kate.”

Peter turned his head to the side, even though Chris couldn’t have seen it.

“If we’re being truthful, there was a time when I was younger when I could have prevented all of this. Kate was fifteen. Fifteen! And I saw what Gerard was turning her into. I saw the enjoyment in her eyes on a hunt. I could have … I don’t know, I could have done something. And she might never have become what she became.”

“She made her own choices. We all do.”

“She was fifteen, Peter! But I told myself that I had Allison to think about. I needed to keep my daughter safe, but that was a lie. I was afraid of my father. I was a twenty-eight-year-old man with a wife and a daughter, a mortgage, a closet full of guns, and more combat training than a U.S. Marine yet I was terrified of my father.”

Peter was sure that Chris could hear the sneer in his voice. “I hope you’re not looking for absolution from me.”

“No.”

“Good, because I won’t give you any. I will offer understanding however. Family is difficult, especially when it doesn’t work like most of the other families you see around you every day. In the end though, I don’t care who was responsible for Kate. She paid for what she did. All I really care is that you’re willing to go through with this.”

“I am. When do you pay for what you did?” 

“I did. I still died in that other world, and I spent a very uncomfortable seven months in Eichen House.”

Chris scoffs. “You poor baby.”

Peter smirked to no one. “I didn’t say I paid the full price. Trauma discount.”

The laughter from the other side of the door was bitter but cleansing. “Let’s get back to work.”

**~*~**

Allison took point when leaving the south entrance of the facility, pulling Lydia behind her. She shot Peter a glare that would have stunned a bull elephant.

“Why are you looking at me like that?”

“It didn’t work!”

“I am aware of that!” Peter answered, gesturing to wounds that weren’t healing. Wounds from an alpha took longer to heal. “It worked before, I don’t know why it didn’t work now.”

“He didn’t even recognize me,” the disheveled strawberry-blond said, a little dazed. “I thought you said …”

“You did!” Peter exclaimed. “Your voice brought him back.”

Allison snorted in contempt and closed the mountain ash ring. No supernatural creature would be able to leave the bunker now, which left only Alan inside who could break the ash. 

“What do we do now?” Lydia asked. “Is there anything else we can do?”

This Lydia had been worn down by her long stay in Eichen House. Without the influence of the pack, her Banshee abilities had destabilized her and her well-meaning mother had placed her there in order for her to get better. She never would, because she didn’t need treatment for schizophrenia, she needed to master her abilities. Luckily, all that she had been was not completely gone, as she had grasped on the potential to save her old boyfriend with both hands.

Peter would have preferred his Lydia. Her brilliance would be helpful in this utter clusterfuck of ruined plans. 

“I don’t know.” When Lydia had confronted Jackson, he had paused, but he hadn’t remained paused for long. Allison’s quick thinking and a flash bang grenade had saved them momentarily, and they had split up to neutralize Gerard’s greater numbers.

“We don’t have time to do this now.” Allison turned to him. “I’m going back in.”

“What?” Lydia cried. “Are you insane?”

Peter gestured at the ground. “I can’t come with you unless you break the ash.”

“Lydia, my father, Scott, and Dr. Deaton are in there. We have to finish this.” Allison turned to Peter. “This isn’t your fight. You will take Lydia somewhere safe.”

His jaw dropped open. “Did you just give me an order?” 

“I did.” The true matriarch of the Argents raised one finger. “I’m in charge here, and you’re not Peter.”

Lydia’s eyes shifted from Allison to Peter and then back again. 

“I am—”

“You’re not our Peter. I finally believe you. You aren’t the Peter that killed Laura. You aren’t the Peter that Bit Scott or Lydia. You’re someone else. You told us, but I didn’t really believe it until I saw you get the drop on Gabe when he was about shoot my Dad.” Allison turned to look back into the bunker. 

“I did those things in my world, Allison. I used Lydia, I abused Scott, I killed your aunt right in front of you.”

The huntress grimaced. “And? The most important thing to me, right here, right now, is that I know that you — the you standing right in front of me — wouldn’t do that. Lydia is my friend, and I need her to be safe. I can’t go back in there and take control of my family’s legacy if I have any doubts that she isn’t.”

“Allison,” Lydia began. 

“Gerard might not know the details, but he must have felt his control over Jackson waver when Lydia called out to him. You know him as well as I do, Peter — will Gerard let her live?”

“Not a chance.”

Allison glared at him once again. “Then do as you’re told.”

With a shrug of his shoulders, he raised both hands in surrender. If Allison Argent wanted to charge head first into a hopeless battle that would probably claim the lives of Scott McCall, Chris Argent, and Alan Deaton, he was the last person to want to get in the way of that. He reached out and took Lydia by the arm.

“No.” 

“Come on, Lydia.”

“No. We can’t leave.” Lydia’s eyes grew glassy and distant. “They’ll die.”

Allison was ignoring her friend as she dug something out of her pocket. Peter recognized this for what it was: a banshee prediction.

He didn’t care. _He didn’t._ This reality didn’t matter anyway. In ten days, there’d be another full moon and he’d be swept away to another world. He had no skin in this game. He didn’t owe anyone here.

Peter identified the thing in Allison’s hand. It was a detonator. 

As skilled as she was, the huntress was nowhere near as fast as he was. As she took a step over the line, Peter reached out and snagged her wrist. “What the fuck is that?”

The look on her face could have shredded steel. “You know what it is.”

“There weren’t explosives in the plan.”

“You weren’t privy to the _whole_ plan. My father and I determined that this ends tonight, no matter what. We’ve set incendiaries throughout the place. With the mountain ash sealing it off, no one will escape.”

Peter didn’t let go. “Are you serious? What is it with you Argents and burning things down?”

“Poetic justice.” Allison tried to jerk her arm out of his grasp, but she wasn’t strong enough. “You should be happy. Or are you telling me that you’re going to be upset about anyone in there who might perish?”

“Of course …” Peter ground his teeth. “Yes. Yes, I am. Because it’s pointless.”

Allison gasped.

“When I came out of that coma, I would have burned the world if it meant your family was destroyed as well. In the end, I didn’t have to burn anything, but I killed every single person connected to that arson and a few more besides, and it made me happy for all of three minutes. You want to know the last time I was truly happy? When I spent a month in a parallel world where my family was still alive.”

“This is the right thing to do. This is my responsibility.”

“Bullshit.” 

“So what do you want me to do?”

“We stop fighting. We make a decent attempt to get your father and Alan and Scott out.”

“And my grandfather? He’s got Jackson and his men. If he gets out …”

“We run.”

“What?” Allison looked at him.

“We take Lydia and Scott and Alan and your dad and we get the hell out of Beacon Hills. We go somewhere and we rebuild our families. You can do it, and I know that I could do it as well. I have another niece and a daughter and a beta and that’s all I need to reclaim my family. You can get your dad and your boyfriend and you can go France and rebuild the Argent name.”

“Can I?”

“Yes. Absolutely. You remind me of your mother. She could do anything she put her mind to.” He shrugged. “Or you can go in there and get revenge for her and for your aunt and for the ruin of your childhood by killing your grandfather. But here’s the secret: you can’t do both.”

Allison hesitated. She had readied herself for this end, and here Peter was, telling her not to. 

“True revenge requires commitment — full commitment — because when you’re done, there will be nothing left. I screwed up because I tried to have something left over, and that’s a recipe for failure. Take advantage of the lesson I learned.”

“So how do we get them out?”

Peter turned to the entrance and howled. It was the howl of retreat. Alan would know it. Chris would know it. And he hoped that Scott would have enough of a connection to him to know it. 

“Be ready to break the mountain ash when you see them.”

He stood there, shoulder to shoulder with hunter, half disbelieving the crap that had come out of his mouth. It didn’t mean anything, he promised himself, even if it was technically true. Revenge was easy, if you planned to burn everything to the ground to get it. It was when you tried to have your revenge and a life afterward that things got difficult.

“Aw, hell,” Peter said out loud. Allison and Lydia looked at him. “I just figured out who is behind the world jumping.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Abbé Faria" is a character in _The Count of Monte Cristo_ imprisoned at the Chateau d'If. He was a big believer in self improvement.


	6. Axis Mundi

It would be safe enough, Peter had wagered. 

Allison, her father, Scott, and Alan had long ago fled Beacon Hills. Peter didn’t know where they were going, and while he pretended it was for their own protection that he refuse to be told where they were going, it wasn’t for that reason. With the epiphany he had, he was now sure that this whole world would cease to exist in a matter of days. Tonight would see it come to pass.

With all his senses sharpened, he walked a hidden trail through the Preserve. He needed to be at least moderately cautious. While he was sure that Gerard wouldn’t expect him to have returned so quickly after their failed coup, it wouldn’t do to be captured before the moon reached its highest point in the sky. 

Gerard had survived their attempt, as Allison had followed Peter’s suggestion and not set off the bombs. Peter had to imagine that Jackson and most of the hunter-wolf goons had survived as well. Peter wasn’t sure exactly how many casualties there had been, but the old bastard would immediately begin retrenching tactically, concerned that his loss of control over Allison would leave his flank open for the Calaveras. Peter didn’t really care about what happened next, of course, but the thought of the paranoid fear that Gerard would have experienced over the last week made him smile a little.

He tromped upon piles of dead leaves, the night wind’s slight gusts tossing the ones he disturbed around the bare pillars of the trees. Fall had grown chill early, but that wouldn’t stop him from reaching his destination. Peter came upon the clearing suddenly, as one always did.

There it was, standing sentinel over a cold world: _The Nemeton._

Peter could feel the bone-aching thrum of its power from where he stood at the edge of the old grove. Luckily, if he were right, no one would remember how many times the world had shifted, so no one would be able to put together how much of an idiot he had been. Reshaping reality required an enormous amount of power, and there was nothing more powerful in Beacon Hills then this wretched vegetation.

He walked up to the stump and brushed a few dead leaves off of the top. Glancing up at the moon, he estimated how much time this world had left. It was enough time for a conversation. 

“So. Let’s chat.”

Nothing but the rattle of the wind through dead branches answered him. 

“I should have realized it was you. The clues were all there, but I’ve always had a certain blind spot when it comes to people. I don’t mind telling you that I think most on the individuals I’ve met have the brains God gave a rutabaga, so I have come to expect them to be miserable failures, and, for the most part, I’ve seldom been disappointed.”

He chuckled at the mistake. 

“On the other hand, I have often been disappointed in myself. Scott. Stiles. Lydia. Allison. Even that little kitsune whose name I’ve apparently forgotten. They were silly, self-centered teenagers, but they were capable of feats for which I wasn’t prepared. The first step to any recovery is to admit that you’re fallible. My greatest flaw was that I lacked faith in the people around me. If you could talk to me right now in a language I could understand, what would you say your weakness would be, Jennifer?”

Peter put a hand on the approximate place where he had killed the Darach less than five years ago.

“I think it’s greed. It’s a definitive weakness, and it’s about this weakness that I have to talk to you about tonight. You see, I nearly missed this key point in Stiles’ analysis. He _stressed_ that I wasn’t behind the shifts, but I was being dragged along with the ride. What it meant was I had to be connected in some way to the true cause of the shifts. Of all the people in all the world capable of such an act, the two of them with whom I am most connected are Lydia … and you.”

The moon crept higher in the sky.

“It couldn’t be Lydia. Lydia has long ago learned to accept that there is a difference between what she could do and what she should do, and while she has the strength and brilliance to try, she also has the will not to succumb to temptation. That left you. I borrowed — no, seriously, let’s be honest with each other — I _stole_ your power to replace that which I had lost when performing my own resurrection. Back then, I had simply assumed I had caught you before you could reconnect to the Nemeton’s power, but that belief was, frankly, foolish. Chris Argent told me later that you had synchronized with the telluric currents, yet I simply didn’t notice that you had already reached the Nemeton before I put an end to you. While my act deprived you of a body and your sacrificially-gained power, your spirit remained tethered to this locus and, as long as I possessed that stolen power, I remain tethered to you.”

Peter paused in his speech to examine the plants that had now nearly covered the old stump even in late fall. Mistletoe was a parasitic plant — it grew on other plants, most often trees. If he had but thought to check on it in the other realities, he could have figured this out a long time ago.

“Ha. At first, I wondered why you would wait so long to make your move, but I hadn’t yet thought it through. As a bodiless soul trapped within the Nemeton, you probably couldn’t do much in the months after. You were a seed waiting to sprout, and it took you five long years, but eventually, you found a way to tap into the power of the Nemeton. Unfortunately for me, we are so strongly linked, that I was dragged along with your temporal renovations.”

There was no response, but how could there be? He was sure he was right. Down in his gut, he was sure he was right.

“Initially, I thought the whole idea behind these changes was some form of elaborate torture, but I suspect now that my discomfort was just a happy by-product for you. You didn’t shift to a world where my family was alive to make me feel better. You shifted to that world to make _Derek_ feel better. Remember what I said about greed? Because a happy Derek wasn’t enough for you. Stopping Kate from burning our family alive didn’t stop Kali from turning on you. You still wanted revenge, but you miscalculated with that attempt — even deranged, Deucalion would never lift a hand against Talia. He wanted to tap that so badly.”

“Then you moved on to Scott and Allison’s disruptive love affair. I didn’t know about their choice to make out in the school buses, and you didn’t either, which confused me until I remembered that it might not just be you in there. All three of those children sacrificed themselves to the Nemeton; through word of mouth, I found out they achieved their goal be reliving the pass. I think you saw their pasts, from the night that I bit Scott a few feet away from here until they went into the ice. With that knowledge, I think your goal in the second world was to make Scott more willing to work with Derek by delaying the traumatic reveal of my beta’s nature to his girlfriend. That didn’t work out.”

“But it did provide me with a significant clue. You aren’t omniscient. You didn’t know how your shifts would turn out, which explains why you play it safe by only changing the world in particular ways.” 

The clearing darkened as wind-born clouds scuttled across the sky.

“It certainly explains why you tried the world where I bit Stiles. You assumed that Deucalion would return to Beacon Hills for any alpha, but he didn’t want someone like me, which make that run a big old bust. And then this last one — Deucalion would have had to take the bait if Gerard won his little game, wouldn’t he? Yet, you underestimated Gerard, as so many have done. It doesn’t matter though, because you aren’t going to let this failure stand in your way anymore than any of the ones before, will you?” 

The clouds dispersed. Time slipped through the trees, a bigger predator than any wolf. 

“Because as I said, you’re greedy. You want to live again — I think that’s obvious — but you also want to have destroyed the Alpha Pack, to feel the visceral satisfaction of taking vengeance with your own hands, and I think you want Derek as well. It’s not enough for you to be in a world where you are alive, because you would still remember what it felt like to fall beneath Kali’s claws, to be _betrayed_ so utterly by someone whom you though you loved. You still want Derek, you want him to look at you and tell you that he understands and, even after all the blood you’ve spilled, that you’re not a monster.”

Peter clucked his tongue. _“Greedy.”_

He stood up and laid one clawed finger on the tree. “And scared. You know, as well as I do, how many ways this could go wrong. You can only make one change at a time, and you don’t get to know the results of that change until it’s too late to go back. What if you shift to a world where the Nemeton is destroyed? Suddenly, your disembodied spirit would lack not only the means to change the world, but also a host. Would you vanish into the ether?”

He puts both hands flat on the tree, feeling the uneven grain. He imagined he even felt the rings beneath his palms.

“I have a solution for you. It’s not, ultimately, the one you want, but it’s one you need to contemplate.” Peter looked up at the moon’s path. “And you’re running out of time to make a decision for this iteration.”

“I’m going to tell you a secret, one that I learned for myself, and one I shared with Allison, which is why your role in this became obvious to me. Revenge is as greedy as you are. It wants all of you, and so it never feels finished until it takes all of you. My revenge on Kate and her conspirators will always be … incomplete, because I regret what I did to Laura and to Derek and even to Lydia — I guess, even to Scott, a little bit, whatever.” He shrugged. “So the revenge I have is tainted; it does not satisfy, it will not satisfy, because I am still alive. You either have to commit fully to revenge or you have to give it up.”

At this, he received what he had been waiting for — confirmation. In the half-filled chasm of a root cellar below, a thick vein of the tree shifts and the ground creaks. 

“ _There_ you are. But if you want to live? If you want to move on but you still can’t bring yourself to live in a world where you don’t kill the Alpha Pack? Then I know the perfect thing to change. When Scott asked you to end the storm, instead of refusing, do it, and then leave town as fast as you can. You’ll have a form of revenge, though it will stick in your craw just as mine does. Ennis will still be dead. Kali will still be dead. Aiden will die before Christmas, trying to win Lydia Martin’s love. Deucalion will last longer but he’ll fall to an assault weapon loaded with wolf’s bane rounds before two years have passed. Ethan will still be alive, but he’s married to Jackson Whittemore, a fate worse than death.” Peter chuckled. “I know the True Alpha. If you stop the storm on the condition that he lets you go, he’ll let you go. He’ll protect you from your enemies. You won’t be able to win Derek’s heart right away and you’ll have to endure Deucalion’s smirk, but you’ll be alive and you’ll be free. You’ll have another life before you, and believe me, life after resurrection is the sweetest life there is.”

The moon was moments from its zenith. He could feel the power of the Nemeton gathering beneath the ground, ready to shift the world on its axis.

“It won’t be easy, but it will be better than the alternative, my dear. _Trust someone who knows._ ”

**~*~**

Three months later, Peter sat at a cafe just west of the Place Saint-Georges in Toulouse.

“So why did you help me?” Jennifer asked, sipping on her ridiculously over-priced tea. 

Peter had his own drink but he put it down. He watched a couple walk down the street with a child in tow. “I once told Cora that I am not particularly fond of things unaccounted. I like to be in as much control as I can be.”

Jennifer smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes. He was surprised that she had even agreed to meet him here, in France, but not surprised that she had only agreed to meet him in a very, very public location. 

“You act as if you don’t believe me.”

“Oh, I believe you, Peter.”

“You might, might, have eventually found a world where you had all the things you wanted.”

The Darach nodded. “Or I might have found a world where the Nemeton no longer existed, and I would be trapped there or worse, destroyed. You had a logical argument.”

“I find it hard to believe you trusted me.”

“I had a few minutes before the moon changes. Without a body and all its fight or flight reflexes, the mind can be very quick. The key thing about your advice was that there was nothing immediately in it for you.” 

“My survival? I hadn’t yet died in the worlds, though not because of lack of trying on certain individuals parts. Perhaps my sanity.”

Jennifer studied him. “I’m going to apologize for the first world.”

“Are you?”

She nodded. “I can only imagine what I would have felt like if someone showed me a world where Kali didn’t betray me.”

Peter, on the surface was calm, but a storm brewed behind his eyes. Eventually, with only the slightest twitch in his hands betraying his turmoil, he continued on blandly. “Apology accepted.”

“You offered the simplest solution, one that would benefit me directly while minimizing the changes to the world. That convinced me of your … sincerity. I almost said good will there, but I don’t mean to insult you.”

The werewolf laughed. “Good idea.”

They sat together as the citizenry passed by oblivious.

“Why Toulouse?”

Jennifer lifted an eyebrow. “You know why.” 

“Better than Siberia or Greenland, I suppose.”

“I don’t speak Chinese or Portuguese, either.” Jennifer continued. “This was the most comfortable Nemeton for me to get close to. You don’t mind the trip.”

“No. I still consider all this you owing me a favor.”

The Darach nodded, admitting the fact. 

“You were right, you know.”

“I frequently am.” 

“I did kill Kali. The alpha pack is gone, but it doesn’t satisfy. It still burns, what they did to me.”

“Bad choice of wording, Jennifer. Very tacky.” Peter sipped on his drink. “We’ll cope. At the risk of sounding saccharine, I’d say we both learned a very valuable lesson.”

“As a teacher, I’m interested in hearing about what you think we have learned.”

“The past is written. It’s cold, immobile, unchangeable where it matters.” He tapped his chest. “Revenge won’t change what happened to us one iota, so it’s a waste of time and energy. There’s something far more important for me on which to focus my efforts.”

“And that would be?” 

Peter looked over the sea of people. “The future, of course. What comes next. There are millions upon millions of possibilities that rely on a single decision. Every time I flip a coin, I create something completely new. Yet I know, in the many different futures out there, there is one incontrovertible fact — _all of them are mine._ ”

**Author's Note:**

> I welcome all criticism as long as it is focused on the characters, plot, cultural sensitivity, and writing of this story. Please don't bring in my other works or commentary. I especially appreciate having typos and grammatical mistakes pointed out.


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